Chairwoman Tsai's Inappropriate Campaigning Exposes President Tsai's Own Incapabilities
United Daily News Editorial, September 10, 2022
Recently, President Tsai Ing-wen has been regularly using her role as the party chairman to help candidates of her ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in elections. Due to her improper words and actions, controversy spreads frequently. President Tsai is accused by the opposition party that she took the opportunity of adding electioneering itinerary when taking the “Air Force One” for local and military inspections. It puts her at fault of using public possession for personal purposes. In addition, many of Tsai’s speeches blur the line between right and wrong and cause divisions among people, which makes her short of the dignity and attitude of a country’s leader.
According to the information released by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) members of the Legislative Yuan, President Tsai had at least five trips that were for elections purposes but announced in the name of inspections. She “inspected” Chiayi, Yilan, Hsinchu, Penghu, Hualien and other places as the President; then she “switched” to the role of party chairwoman to support DPP candidates. All these special planes and transportation fees, plus accompanying staff, are all paid for by the government. The Office of the President responded that these trips follow “the precedents of President Ma Ying-jeou’s practice”. However, the Office could not provide any payment receipts, making their response seem perfunctory and untruthful.
In various election rallies, President Tsai made many unfitting remarks that are no less controversial than her taking advantage of her position for personal gains. The most controversial issue is when President Tsai openly urged “all party officials unite in believing Lin Chih-chien” and “support Lin in defending his innocence”. In the end, Lin could not stand against the public opinion and announced his withdrawal from the election. Two weeks later, Chung Hua University also revoked Lin’s master’s degree due to plagiarism. Tsai Ing-wen’s “endorsement” turned out to be a disagreeable mistake, which is a rare incident in the history of Taiwan’s elections.
On the one hand, President Tsai is recently helping DPP female candidates in elections; on the other hand, Tsai mocks Taichung Mayor Lu Shio-yen for calling herself a “Mother Mayor” and accuses Lu to be indifferent to the city’s affairs. In reality, the term “Mother Mayor” expresses Lu’s heart and “motherly love” towards the people. The fact that Tsai tramples Lu’s gentle and caring image only shows Tsai’s ruthlessness. What Tsai’s governance missing is exactly that kind of sympathy and closeness to the people. Instead, Tsai has cultivated a bunch of young supporters and fans within her party. As the leader of the country, it would have been better if she could take care of the common people with the same compassion. Tsai’s ridicule of “Mother Mayor” does nothing more than reflect her own arrogance and cold heart.
President Tsai’s public call to “liberate Hualien and break political families” at the rally in Hualien was also inappropriate. Hualien has a multi-ethnic structure and a particular geographical environment, which makes the Hualien people less vulnerable to ideological provocation than the city people in the west. Tsai’s belief that Hualien needs “liberation” reflects her chauvinistic and authoritarian mentality. Instead of assuming that the people of Hualien are imprisoned, Tsai should think about how she has imprisoned the hearts of Taiwanese people. If Tsai really wants to discourage “political families”, she should fix the second generations of DPP politicians fighting over official positions, as well as children of high-level political officials who support Chen Shih-chung, the DDP candidate for Taipei Mayor.
Another mindless remark from President Tsai happened when she spoke at the election rally for candidate Chen. Tsai blurted out “Taipei lost its confidence and glory as the capital”. If what she said were true, then surely the President is also responsible since Taipei is the capital of the country that she is leading. In addition, Tsai praises Chen for taking the right measures for covid prevention, which is not in line with the people’s perception of an efficacious epidemic prevention. In the midst of everything, Chen’s recent toilet policy brought about the peeping controversy, which again shows how far President Tsai’s understanding is from public opinions and sentiments.
President Tsai also assisted the DPP candidate for Miaoli County magistrate, Hsu Ting-chen, and boasted that he can “strengthen finances”. In New Taipei, Tsai criticized Mayor Hou You-yi for not “building enough public housings”. Tsai’s praises and criticisms are like boomerangs, returning to herself with more harm than good. During Tsai’s governance, she set up an overbearing special budget, normalizing the use of debt to pay off debt, and putting national finances and debts in a dangerous spot. In the past, she has promised to “build 200,000 public housing units in eight years.” In the past six years, less than 40 percent of what was promised had been achieved, and most of them were built by the local government. Tsai is not aware that when she is pointing at her opponents with one finger, the other four fingers are actually pointing at herself, showing her own shortcomings.
After President Tsai’s supporting Lin’s plagiarism went sour, her moral legitimacy was no longer the same and she did not even realize it. On top of that, her recent inappropriate remarks are only worsening her already deteriorating image.