President Tsai Must Face Squarely 6 Million People’s Disappointment

 President Tsai Must Face Squarely 6 Million People’s Disappointment

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 14, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

Tsai Ing-wen won re-election as president with 8.17 million votes, but those who voted to support the other two tickets, when added together reached over 6 million votes, representing these voters’ dissatisfaction and disappointment. In the last presidential election, Tsai Ing-wen criticized Ma Ying-jeou for "leading only half of the population to march forward", miring Taiwan in a predicament; she would play a "barrel hoop" galvanizing people’s solidarity. However, in the past four years, not only the purge of political parties has become more serious, divergences among communal groups have expanded into generational conflicts, the machinery of the state, on the other hand, has been used to oppress the people, in fact deepening the fissures in the entire society. With regard to this, President Tsai must ponder carefully how to mend this situation, otherwise, the water barrel could break and collapse from now on.

According to the normal practice of democracy, after the dissipation of electoral gun smoke, the ruling and opposition parties should both return to the tracks of constitutional government to engage in completion, pushing for political and economic progression of the country. The support of a very high number of votes that Tsai Ing-wen gained this time, on the other hand, leads people to worry that the DPP would erroneously interpret vox populi, misinterpreting the sudden increase in public opinion on account of "anti-China" as the people’s support for the Tsai government's authoritarian, closed-door policies and anti-democratic governance over the past four years, so as to double-down in governance, even condoning the rampage of fat cats. If the DPP would indeed interpret the so-called "new vox populi" in these general elections, then that could be a very serious blunder.

Using the governance of the past four years as a yardstick for scrutiny, with regard to the next four years under Tsai Ing-wen, first, we urge the president to actively mend the fissures in Taiwan’s social fabric. However, in the past four years, she has never done or said anything conducive to social “harmony”; with respect to this crack, we hope she will devote more attention and energy for action in her next term. Second, we urge her to stop the various acts that destroy Taiwan's democracy; there is no need to employ means that destroy constitutional government to attain the ends, otherwise it would be no different from an "imperial system". Third, we urge her to demand that the DPP restrain the Green camp's acts in running cyber warriors. In the two electoral victories, Tsai Ing-wen relied on massive cyber warriors for attacks and achievement of goals, effectively vilifying and oppressing her opponents.

The opponents with more than 6 million votes are an important spur for the powers-that-be. Although the "anti-China" slogan called up huge momentum in the general elections, honestly responding to the expectations of the vox populi is indeed the unfailing truth for the powers-that-be.

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