Written by a Poli-Sci professor of a university here, off the Front Page Sections, translated…
Recently, President Tsai gave her best shot at the local elections coming up at the end of the year, and stated that this election would be the way we can “protect our values of democracy”, and she’d also, pointed out how China attempted to use “enormous strengths” to affect the democracy progressions happening in Taiwan.
So, what’s meant by the “enormous strengths” from across the straits? Currently, there’s, no valid, concrete evidence, but the government, the houses, and the news media related to the DDP, even U.S. had gathered up the proofs, said that there were fake news being leaked out from across the strait, in attempts to influence the elections; the Executive Department of the government demanded that spying on the media is absolutely necessary, to the point of investigating, and even, arresting the workers. And suddenly, this “false news” (especially if it came from across the oceans in China!), clearly, became the biggest killer of Taiwan’s democracy.
Naturally, there’s, a reason for this proofless accusation or doubts, but, controlling the media, it’s a price at the cost of democracy, nor was this the very first of its kind, especially when the control came, directly from the government itself, it’s easy, to push the democratic systems, into a dictatorship; and so, the one of the founding fathers of the U.S., Jefferson stated, “if I had to choose between government and news media, I’d choose the news media”, and what may be drawn from his life experience is this: if the government became untrustworthy, and the news media wasn’t controlled by the government yet, and can have a multitude of opinions available, then, there would be the set guarantees of individuals’ freedom of speech.
And it can also be said, that “fake news” can damage democracy, but, it serves as a sort of a balance too, and this problem had already been, pinpointed in Taiwan. Currently, the government is training its people, to teach people how to differentiate for themselves by education; but, another huge damage to Taiwan’s democracy is that President Tsai never touched, nor did she show any care of concerns of, or any determinations in the issue of the “real bills”.
The Taiwanese elections are costly. Setting aside the guarantees the candidates would have to pay, and this may prevent those who actually wanted to make the societies better to sign up, because their pockets are deep enough; as the separate parties hosted its voting sessions for the candidates, especially when there’s internal fights, how much money is it going to cost? The cost spent on the elections aren’t restricted by law, and, there’s no way that people can know where the money that was put into the elections went, but the money had, deeply influenced the outcomes of the elections, as well as the directions of the policies set up by the elected in the futures.
And so, everything is connected, and, there’s, NO way that we can get those who really want to better the societies onto the voting rosters, because like the writer of this one said: their pockets aren’t deep enough!!!