Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan Independence Double March Can’t Save Tsai Ing-wen’s Impotent Governance

 Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan Independence Double March Can’t Save Tsai Ing-wen’s Impotent Governance

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

March 20, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

No sooner had the DPP safeguarded two legislative seats in bitter battles suddenly came the bombshell that Lai Ching-te would enter the DPP’s presidential primary, with no time for Tsai Ing-wen to react. Lai Ching-te’s announcement was described as an “ambush”: party-government high echelons were kept in the dark, the New Tide faction comrades used all efforts to dissuade him but to no avail, and only a minority of pro-independence elders knew in advance. Lai’s manifesto stated that “Taiwan does not want to be another Hong Kong or Tibet,” hoisting banners for the Taiwan independence double march. Tsai Ing-wen, surprisingly, could not respond immediately, only using young literati-style rhetoric: "Please walk together with me!"

Lai Ching-te challenged Tsai Ing-wen internally, while externally he zeroed in on Han Kuo-yu as his principal opponent, saying that this was not only a struggle for the paths of the DPP, it also concerned the future development of Taiwan and the struggles of paths for national governance. To put it simply, Lai Ching-te did not agreed with Tsai Ing-wen's conservative route in cross-Strait issues. On the matter of national governance, he, however, believed that the Tsai government’s impotence could not win people’s hearts, believing that he should replace her.

Lai Ching-te disregards the dissuasion by comrades of the same faction, abruptly challenging Tsai Ing-wen; this explains that his self-appointment as a "Taiwan independence worker" was not empty talk and that he was anxious to put it into practice. In fact, the DPP is currently in the doldrums in large part due to the ineffectual governance of the Tsai government: including the DPP’s narrow-mindedness, stumbling in personnel appointments; or because lacking professionalism, and good at criticizing but inept at the work at hand; or arrogance and egotism, refusing to communicate. These problems are all problems of "governance capabilities," not that cross-Strait policies are "not radical enough." Lai Ching-te apparently misperceived the cause and effect and misunderstood the answers. With Lai Ching-te’s announcement, he hoped to change Taiwan independence to double march. In such a case, wouldn’t Taiwan be filled with gun smoke across the skies with no days of peace?

When he was mayor of Tainan, Lai Ching-te did win the halo of "deity Lai," but this laurel dissipated with his premiership. Now, the public wants to see what secret weapons his "Taiwan independence double march" could use to rejuvenate the DPP and make Taiwan prosperous. However, when he spoke out that "pardoning Chen Shui-bian" was a basic principle of behavior for human beings that really caused many people to gasp: Is this the view of morals for Taiwan independence workers?

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