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Local polls set to decide future for Taiwanese
By Lin Thung-hong 林宗弘
The transmission of messages from the future is a popular theme of science fiction movies.
Here are some ideas about what a possible future for Taiwan would look like.
The first concerns what would happen if, when polling stations have closed on Saturday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has lost both Taipei and Greater Taichung.
This eventuality would result in more than 13 million Taiwanese living in areas governed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or independent candidates.
If the KMT also loses Changhua County, the population under the sway of the pan-blue camp would drop below 9 million.
The two main political camps would once again enter a highly competitive period and it would be very difficult to predict the winner of the 2016 presidential election.
Each of the major parties — and perhaps even the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — would have to stand up to strict public scrutiny, in terms of their moral characters and integrity and their cross-strait, industrial, social and other policies.
In this parallel universe, the next two years would offer a great opportunity for promoting social advancement.
In the book Bomb Generation (崩世代), my collaborators and I suggest that the nation is set to face a serious economic and social crisis as the country is taken over by big business, slides into national debt, poverty among young people rises, birth rates drop and the population grows older.
The Sunflower movement also stressed the nation’s excessive reliance on cross-strait trade, and the consequences of a closed and rigid representative democracy.
It is also important to bear in mind how the food scandal involving Ting Hsin International Group’s (頂新國際集團) use of adulterated oil highlighted the negative effects of the exchange of power and money between the rich and privileged on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan is in dire need of political and social reform.
Reforms necessary include the imposition of higher taxes on the wealthy; suppressing housing prices as a way to address the the wealth divide; lowering the voting age; legislative reform that could address the number of legislators; support for Taiwan-centered renewal; encouragement of young entrepreneurs; the establishment of a long-term care system that could include reform of the retirement pension system and an expansion of public kindergartens.
Each of these measures would allow the nation to move one step closer to a more open and equal society, encourage innovation among the younger generation and facilitate sustainable economic and environmental development.
Increasing competition between political parties and politicians would force local governments to renew policies and encourage public participation, and the central government — and perhaps even foreign forces — would also have to respond actively to public opinion.
In an alternative future, the KMT wins Taipei, Greater Taichung and Changhua County and is unassailable.
If this were to happen, weaker groups that wanted to challenge a world ruled by the rich and privileged would have to resort to the same methods now used by laid-off factory workers and farmers who have lost their land — lying down on railroad tracks, blocking roads, going on hunger strike or committing suicide to get the attention of the government and the media.
Which future do we want?
Lin Thung-hong is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Translated by Perry Svensson
source: Taipei Times
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