Election Industry Gets Upgraded, While Democratic Politics, However, Is Falling

 Election Industry Gets Upgraded, While Democratic Politics, However, Is Falling

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 24, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The DPP presidential primary came to a close amid questions; Tsai Ing-wen easily demonstrated the conquest mode of the general mobilization by the machinery of the state. In the heated battle of the KMT’s presidential primary, whether it is Terry Guo, a super rich man in Taiwan, or Han Kuo-yu, who churns up the multitudes, the resources thrown in have been unprecedented. Radically different from the past, the main battlefield of the campaign turns to the Internet; the massive resources injected have also created a great explosion of the "election industry." Under a high degree of mobilization, the mutual cheating game is even more so than before in the virtual reality world; opinions of the society are being dismembered into more fragmented sectors, leading to misgivings in the future of democracy.

The resources spent for the primary, in both the Blue and Green camps, are unprecedented, showing that issue planning as well as strategy scenarios and implementation in Taiwan’s elections have shaped an "industry scale", being implemented through a division of labor among such professional firms as political PR, public opinion polls and information companies. During the information era of "Internet replacing highways", and in the virtual reality battlefield created by ample cash flow, it may easily transcend the limits of time and space in launching waves, churning up public opinion, leaving the opponents unguarded by surprise. Lai Ching-te was precisely a paradigm of being annihilated by the Internet, while Han Kuo-yu, who chooses the "highway counterattacking the Internet", is another case for observation.

Technology creates platforms for communication, and the application of big data provides diversified tools for analysis; however, these have not made democratic politics more accessible or friendly; conversely, they have become sharp tools for politicians to manipulate public opinion. The election industry is constantly being upgraded; the price of democracy is even becoming more and more expensive. No wonder in recent presidential elections, it is commonplace for candidates to spend hundreds of millions of NT dollars in campaign expenses, but the operation of democracy, however, often deviates from the vox populi of the majority.

The crisis of trust in Taiwan's political party politics is rooted in the incompetence of governance, the malfunction of oversight, as well as the abuse of power and destruction of the system on the part of the powers-that-be. No matter how the election industry is creating fanciful miracles, it cannot resolve the predicament of the retrogression of democracy. The only solution lies in the people's vigilance against politicians: especially the-powers-that-be who have packaged "safeguarding political power" into "defending sovereignty", who are carving the flesh of democracy to feed an authoritarian system.

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