My Take | Lame duck status arrives early for Taiwan leader William Lai
Dismal failure in two rounds of votes to recall opposition lawmakers, along with futile referendum, amounts to repudiation of governance
Once is a mistake, twice is a choice. In less than a month, Taiwan’s William Lai Ching-te and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have suffered a double blow with two rounds of recall votes against 31 legislators from the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT). Not a single one was recalled. In the latest round against the remaining seven, it wasn’t even close: votes against the seven recalls ranged between 64.48 per cent and 69.28 per cent.
Lai and the DPP claim the recalls were justified because the opposition majority in the legislature formed by the KMT and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) was obstructing government policies, especially its budget bills. It turns out the island’s voters are perfectly fine with it.
The so-called summer of recalls has wasted precious public resources and energy when ordinary Taiwanese fret about stagnant wages, inadequate housing and the state of the economy. The weekend referendum, on extending the operational life of the island’s last nuclear power plant, is another initiative Lai failed to deliver on.
But Lai is a one-trick pony and a separatist ideologue: provoke Beijing, ingratiate Washington. His government has failed abjectly on both counts, especially the latter. The Americans wouldn’t even let him have a stopover on his way to Latin America last month.
US tariffs have a direct impact on the island’s economy. But unlike major governments around the world that have been focusing on negotiating with the Americans, Lai preferred touring the island preaching anti-Beijing messages.
He was too busy proposing new laws and regulations to restrict cross-strait exchanges at all levels, including marriages, businesses, and even war veterans’ right to visit the mainland to remember the epic Chinese fight against imperial Japan. His priorities were exercising warfare drills at home and in the US, and campaigning to minimise Chinese as an ethnic and cultural identity.
He then pretended it was good news that Washington would impose a conditional 20 per cent tariff, rather than the initially threatened 32 per cent. Taiwan has got nothing by flattering the United States.