Proselytes — people who convert to a new cause — are hard to come by, particularly in politics. Politicians refuse to be converted from one set of political beliefs to another, simply because the conversion almost always spells political suicide. But at least two Democratic Progressive Party leaders have shown symbolic signs of proselytization over the past weeks.
One of them is Yang Chiu-hsing, incumbent magistrate of Kaohsiung County. He lamented in public not long ago that he has been under vicious verbal attacks, and accused of selling out Taiwan, after he bolted the opposition party to run for mayor of the greater special municipality of Kaohsiung.
His sin is that he “conditionally” supports the economic cooperation framework agreement, or ECFA, signed between Taiwan and China at the end of June.
The opposition party, from its Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen on down, is vehemently opposed to the ECFA, declaring it as an act to surrender Taiwan to the People's Republic of China. In other words, anybody who supports the ECFA betrays their hate-China cause.
Yang said he visited Australia and Singapore to meet Taiwanese “scholars,” who are worried their homeland may be sold out to China by President Ma Ying-jeou. “I told them what I believe,” said the magistrate, who is running as an independent in the election scheduled for Nov. 27. “Even if Ma wanted to sell out Taiwan, he couldn't,” he pointed out. The reason is simple.
Taiwan is a democracy, and Ma could never complete the due process for a sellout. A referendum or plebiscite has to be passed to make Taiwan a part of the People's Republic. Nobody would vote for it.
As a matter of fact, no one can sell out Taiwan. That's what we have pointed out in this column or elsewhere countless times and all the people of Taiwan know that for a fact, Yang and Tsai included. As politicians, however, they have to pipe up the sellout tune in election time to canvass votes from people who have been brainwashed into hating China — the place where their ancestors have come from.
Tsai is the other closet proselyte who stresses in her “Ten-Year Platform” those immigrants from the mainland of China after the Second World War should not be hereafter regarded as aliens. It took almost a year for her to complete the first draft of the platform for her party in the next decade.
Of course, it has to be approved by the party at one of its national congresses.
She denies her party espouses Hoklo chauvinism, although she admits something has to be done to dispel a common “misunderstanding” that it regards every Chinese immigrant to Taiwan after the island was restored to the Republic of China at the end of World War II as “one of them,” not “one of us.”
She also declares in the platform that her party wants to make Hoklo, a Chinese dialect spoken by the greatest majority of the people on Taiwan, a “national language” on a par with Mandarin, which was made the national language by the Kuomintang government in Nanjing and is the official language of the Republic of China on Taiwan.
The public perceive the party considers the Hakka minority a “one-of-us” sub-group and places the indigenous peoples, those of Austronesian tribes, somewhere between the out-of-province residents and the Hakka in its ethnic spectrum.
Are Tsai and Yang being proselytized? Not at all. They are only trying to win the November elections. Tsai wishes to win the mayoralty election in the new special municipality of New North City, which is called Xinbeishi in Mandarin, and to pave the way for her presidential race against Ma in 2012 as well.
Neither of them can afford to wean themselves from the party's hardcore Taiwan independence supporters, while they have to do what they can to win over middle-class undecided voters who fully understand the ECFA is more likely to benefit Taiwan. Many of those voters are mainlanders resident in the county of Taipei, which is scheduled to be upgraded to a special municipality.
Yang had to own up to the self-evident truth that nobody can sell Taiwan out in order to defeat Chen Chu, incumbent mayor of Kaohsiung and one of his most loyal former comrades. Tsai needs to disavow Hoklo chauvinism, albeit she tacitly admits her party has so far regarded as aliens all those immigrants from China after 1945 and their offspring. Leopards can't change their spots. Neither can politicians be proselyted.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於99.08.18，The China Post 4版）