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Small Parties’ Bewilderment: Cigarette Smuggling Case Surprisingly Elicits Internecine Fights Between "Small Greens"

icon2019/08/05
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Small Parties’ Bewilderment: Cigarette Smuggling Case Surprisingly Elicits Internecine Fights Between "Small Greens"

 

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

August 1, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

 

Taiwan’s political parties never lack pompous talks of reforms, but the vicious struggles between the Blue and Green endure year after year, while the tendency of “politicizing” the machinery of the state is becoming worse every day. Strangely, the fighting between the "small Greens" in recent days in fact has also heightened, while the fuse is surprisingly the cigarette smuggling case by national security special agents.

Legislator Huang Guo-chang, of the New Power Party (NPP), exposed the national security cigarette smuggling case, receiving attention from various circles of society. Unexpectedly, Wang Hao-yu, a Green Party city councilman, subsequently launched a series of attacks against Huang Guo-chang. He said Huang Guo-chang in the beginning was elected legislator representing Xizhe District of New Taipei City because the DPP “yielded” the seat to him; now for the cigarette smuggling case, Huang targeted the DPP as an "enemy" in hot pursuit, making Tsai Ing-wen’s re-election bid’s chances very risky. Wang Hao-yu lambasted this as "ingratitude” and "biting the hand that feeds you."

Not only that, the Green Party went a step further, exposing that Kawlo Iyun Pacidal, an at-large legislator of NPP affiliation, utilized the association under the chairmanship of her assistant Chen En-tse, to secure a green energy subsidy from the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the amount of NT$4 million with no record of substantive work, being involved in conflicts of interest.

From Huang Guo-chang’s exposé of the cigarette smuggling case, it has developed a play within a play titled "The Green Party Versus the NPP". This interlude of "fighting between the small Greens", viewed from the labyrinth of Taiwan's party politics, is in fact not interesting at all, and may even make people feel lamentable The reasons are as follows:

First, if "little Greens" only play the role of "big Green" vassals, with no consciousness of self-identity, then what difference would it make for Taiwan with the addition of the NPP, the Green Party, or the Taiwan Statebuilding Party?

Second, when an opposition party encounters issues affecting fundamental governance of the state and public interests, if it still first considers its own relationship with the ruling party, or even assisting in covering up for "ingratiating itself", then what is the purpose of the existence of this kind of political party?

Third, the NPP is the product of the Sunflower Student Movement; now it is mired in an internal crisis of divisions in the struggle of “whether or not it wants to be a small Green." Now the Green Party, in the midst of the NPP’s fight against corruption, is adopting all measures trying to capture the position of "premier small Green", exposing conversely that it lacks core values itself.

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