Tsai should be looking beyond the 2016 election

By Alfred E. Tsai
August 3, 2015, 12:02 am TWN

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Nearly eight months have passed since last year's local elections. Since its crushing defeat, the Kuomintang (KMT) as the ruling party has yet to rebuild itself, impress the public, or recover backing from traditional supporters and moderate voters. The outcome of the 2016 election is already clear. A united and confident Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is readily anticipating a transfer of political power from a fragmented and slacking ruling party in which the strongest potential candidates have indicated no intention to run amid low approval ratings of President Ma Ying-jeou's administration.

DPP Chairwoman and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen is widely admired for her experiences in international and cross-strait affairs. Tsai graduated from National Taiwan University in 1978 and Cornell University in 1980 and obtained her Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics in 1984 at age 28. Her experiences as university professor and trade negotiator opened the door to more senior positions in government leadership. Under President Lee Teng-hui, Tsai served on the advisory committee of the National Security Council. She was a chief architect of President Lee's 1999 "Two States Theory," which interprets the cross-strait relationship as special state-to-state relations.

In the Taipei political arena still mainly dominated by males, Tsai entered the scene in 2000 as the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) minister under President Chen Shui-bian. In just a few years, Tsai rapidly experienced and progressed to become legislator-at-large, vice premier, and chairwoman of the DPP. Following her 2010 campaign for New Taipei City mayor, Tsai has been regarded as a presidential figure who rebuilt the DPP's vigor and can bring forth rejuvenated leadership. Because polls continue to show Tsai's commanding lead over Hung Hsiu-chu, her KMT opponent, it is in Taiwan's best interest for Tsai to set her sights for the long run beyond next year's elections.

The next president of the Republic of China needs to overcome divides and break the incumbent political gridlock. Since the first transfer of political power in 2000, Taiwan's ruling and opposition parties have experienced deadlock and stalled the passage of important laws in the Legislative Yuan. At present, for example, the cross-strait agreement on trade in services, the supervisory provisions for cross-strait agreements, and the special provisions for free economic pilot zones are awaiting deliberation and see no legislative approval in sight. Such partisanship and inefficiency make the government's implementation of public policies especially difficult and in turn hinder Taiwan's economic progress and national development.

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1 Comment

August 3, 2015 atwood1127@

Tsai Ing-Wen is embarrassing Taiwan. Her party mobilizes High School students to promote that WWII sex slaves in Taiwan were volunteers. That is embarrassment to Taiwan's human right stands. Tsai Ing-Wen is embarrassing Taiwan.

A major U.S. publishing company, McGraw-Hill Education, rejected a request by the Japanese government to change passages in a history textbook about women who were forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

McGraw-Hill said --“Scholars are aligned behind the historical fact of ‘comfort women,’ and we unequivocally stand behind the writing, research and presentation of our authors.”