The president expected too much, while much of the electorate may in fact be brain-dead

TAIWAN’S LEGISLATIVE elections are over and the diagnosis has been confirmed – Taiwan is mentally ill, schizophrenic, to be exact. Half of the electorate is democratically oriented, want to see necessary reforms implemented and understand that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” The other half, however, is entrenched in stupifyingly craven dogma, are logic-challenged and have just voted to maintain the “status quo” of a legislature controlled by an opposition who enjoys voting down bills simply because they are favored by the ruling party (regardless of their usefulness to the nation).

This was supposed to be where the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained a working majority in the legislature and put an end to the incessant stonewalling of the opposition. Hell, it should have been a slam-dunk. Who was again leading the opposition? Featureless and clueless KMT Chair-bot Lien Chan (³s¾Ô), who ran in 2000 for president and lost; in 2004 and lost; who contested the result of the last race in court and lost – twice; and who led a group of simpletons to pout, then shout, then push through an unconstitutional “truth commission” (if that isn’t an oxymoron, I don’t know what is) to confirm their own LSD-inspired conspiracy theory about the March assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) that even Oliver Stone would laugh at….

Omniloquacious: “It’s a terrible, terrible disaster for Taiwan. I can’t bear to turn on the TV to see Lien Chan’s malevolent face gloating in oily triumph.” Don’t forget his desiccated former beauty queen wife standing by her man, but an arm’s length away….

Robert_storey: “Well, the polls always did say that most Taiwanese support the status quo. Looks like they got it. Just goes to show, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the Taipei Times editorial section.”

Of course it should be pointed out that turnout for what could have been watershed elections was a paltry 59 percent. So this means that half of these think good legislating equals the ability to accurately throw a lunchbox at a member of the DPP, while 31 percent simply don’t give a shit.

But then isn’t the status quo, at least in Taiwan, a form of laziness and reluctance to move forward?

Zhujianlun: “Status quo only works for so long. When it changes – and it will change – if Taiwan isn’t ready for it, then Saturday’s result shows that the Taiwanese people will have been party to their newly enhanced vulnerability.”

But how did this happen?

The losers are blaming the vote-allocation scheme, which is a way to make sure that more people run in the same place than could possibly win, thereby robbing votes from their own party by diluting the vote. It’s such a dumbass system that this was the last time it will ever be used in Taiwan.

However, there seems to be a more direct answer. As carson71 put it, “I guess the Taiwanese public is not quite ready to be as bold and aggressive with the changes to Taiwan’s name, Constitution, etc. Did the DPP and TSU push it too far? Did they misread their constituents’ sentiments by that much?”

I believe that they did. Like a gambler who has a run of good luck, President Chen started doing what all good gamblers avoid – betting big on a high-risk spin of the wheel. Saying that he would re-write the Constitution (impossible without 75 percent of the legislature backing such a move, so in effect, totally empty words), emphasizing “Taiwan” on overseas missions, and trying to make the KMT shove their sun-shaped logo where it doesn’t shine were all over-extensions of his political capital in terms of core support.

President Chen made the critical mistake regarding Taiwan and independence – it is the truth that dare not speak its name.

Unfortunately, the electorate in Taiwan has now made a rod for its own back that we will all have to suffer.

Hsiadogah seems to put the whole matter into sharp focus: “[The] ‘pan-greens’ aren’t the losers in this election. Taiwan is.”

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Wolf Reinhold is a moderator on www.forumosa.com, a discussion forum for Taiwan’s online community.