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Home Editorials of Interest Taipei Times Seeking consensus to foster unity

Seeking consensus to foster unity

President William Lai (賴清德) on Tuesday gave the second of a series of 10 talks that he plans to deliver across Taiwan. The talk came with few surprises, and not just because of the use of the usual platitudes of national unity.

Lai’s approach to both the opposition in Taiwan — the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China has been to hold out olive branches tinged with an implicit critique: a call for consensus, but also a caution that he will compromise only so far.

It was no coincidence that he mentioned the 1949 Battle of Guningtou (古寧頭) and the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis as exemplars of the idea that “united, we are stronger,” the shared effort of the armed forces and civilians, irrespective of ethnicity, to safeguard Taiwan proper and the outlying islands.

Guningtou was fought in Kinmen between the retreating forces of the KMT following its defeat in China by the CCP. The KMT forces successfully defended Kinmen, which had always been part of China, and held it while the main KMT forces retreated to Taiwan proper, which the Japanese had relinquished in 1945.

The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis was the successful defense of Kinmen and Matsu in 1958 following a sustained bombardment by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Lai’s evocation of these events was a reminder to the KMT of the origin story of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, and of who the real enemy is.

Neither was it a coincidence that he referenced Taiwanese democracy pioneer Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水). Chiang was born in Yilan in 1890 during Qing Dynasty rule; he was only four years old when the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan, never again to come under Chinese rule under international law.

In 1927, Chiang cofounded a pro-Taiwan political party during Japanese colonial rule: a courageous stand for Taiwanese sovereignty and for unity in the face of rule by an external, colonial power.

The party’s name is often rendered, in English, as the Taiwanese People’s Party (臺灣民眾黨). In Chinese, it is identical to the name that then-Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) chose when he established the TPP in 2019.

It was no coincidence, either, that Ko chose that name. He was very aware of the history, and had expressed admiration for Chiang and the hope that he could “inherit” Chiang’s unfinished work. Lai was reminding TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) of the political DNA buried in Ko’s concept of the party that he founded.

For anyone in the audience who had not picked up on these references, Lai went on to mention Taiwan’s 38 years under martial law, the 228 Incident of 1947 and the 1979 Formosa Incident, also known as the Kaohsiung Incident, all of which were visited upon Taiwanese by the KMT. He continued by referring to all the people who had fought against authoritarian rule and had sacrificed their lives fighting for democracy, implicitly referencing Chiang and the original TPP in their struggle against colonial Japan, and the Taiwanese in their struggle against the KMT party-state.

To achieve a true whole-of-society effort to deter CCP aggression, Lai would need not just the public, but the KMT and the TPP on board. He knows that is unlikely to happen, and this is why he has embarked on this series of talks. He cannot get the opposition on his side to help foster unity among its followers, so he is trying to recruit the opposition’s followers to help him rein in the opposition parties’ destructive behavior.

If he succeeds, that is where the real surprise will come.


Source: Taipei Times - Editorials 2025/06/26




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Newsflash

The odds of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) being re-elected in 2012 yesterday fell below 50 percent for the first time since May, according to a university prediction market.

Prediction markets are speculative exchanges, with the value of an asset meant to reflect the likelihood of a future event.

On a scale from NT$0 to NT$100, the probability of Ma winning a re-election bid was, according to bidders, NT$48.40, the Center for Prediction Market at National Chengchi University said.

The center has market predictions on topics including politics, the economy, international affairs, sports and entertainment. Members can tender virtual bids on the events, with the bidding price meant to reflect probability.

The re-election market had attracted 860,000 trading entries as of yesterday. It was launched in April.

The center said the figure slipped 2.3 percentage points yesterday from a day earlier, when Ma conceded that his party did not fare as well as hoped in the “three-in-one” elections.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) won 12 of Saturday’s 17 mayor and commissioner elections, but its total percentage of votes fell 2 percentage points from 2005 to 47.88 percent of votes nationwide.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won just four of the races, but received 45.32 percent of the ballots, or a 7.2 percentage-point increase from 2005.

Since the center opened the trading on Ma’s re-election chances on April 11, prices have largely hovered around NT$60, but jumped to NT$70 in mid-June. The figure then fell to NT$51.80 in August after Typhoon Morakot lashed Taiwan, killing hundreds.

After then-premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) resigned in September, the price returned to NT$63.2 and remained at around NT$60 for the following two months, the center said.

Since Ma took over as KMT chairman, the center said the number had steadily declined from NT$58 on Nov. 18 to NT$50.80 on Dec. 5. After Saturday’s elections, the figure fell below NT$50.

The center said the outcome yesterday would likely affect next year’s elections for the five special municipalities, as well as the next presidential election.

It also said the probability of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) winning re-election was 72 percent, while the chances of Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) winning again were 20 percent.

Source: Taipei Times 2009/12/07