No calm before the storm...

Feel free to close this browser window if you're sick of politics, the ludicrous state of world affairs, the warping of policy issues into meaningless bickering, the wholesale rape and pillage of democratic discourse by a hegemony of irrationality of the irrefutable "public will", etc. The list goes on...still reading?

Taiwan's 6th Legislative Elections are due to happen tomorrow...the backdrop of this democratic process is a wave of negative discourse which has tustled at the fabric of Taiwanese society. We are dealing with two political forces (the pan-green quasi-independence leaning forces and the pan-blue quasi-unification leaning forces) who will dramatize (at all cost) their efforts to secure a majority in parliament. All sorts of promises have been made..."If we win a legislative majority, we will...protect Taiwan, protect the Republic of China, protect our faltering public reputations, build a stable society, provide higher pensions for seniors, reform the media, control the media, control the bad weather, bring ample rains, bring hell to Communist China, declare independence, become the 51st state of the USA, add members to our paltry list of Third World diplomatic allies, etc."

Yet because Taiwan's politicians are not held accoutable to their promises---the current government will always blame the opposition parties for blocking much needed reforms, whilst the opposition will always blame the government for representing a minority viewpoint. Add to the equation a traditional viewpoint that politics and holding political office is inherently evil, the people most qualified to bring real change to our society have either emigrated or are doing research in nicely air-conditioned rooms, giving the occasional tirade at the TV screen on how the country is going down. You might find this amusing; I find it familiar.

And now, as voters prepare to go to the polls, the candidates and parties are in a hustle, trying to convince voters to allocate their votes in a special way that will allow their parties to represent each district with numeric strength. This "vote allocation" strategy, combined with empty promises of reform if "we get a majority" is the ultimate slap-in-the-face to this Great Democratic Experiment... On Saturday, no matter which side wins, I predict the further degeneration of our nation's so-called democracy.

Yet, low voter turnout is not the way out of this institutional quagmire. The electorate (no matter if they vote with their hands, feet or hard currency) must go out there to demonstrate to the world that this sick, sick system is still working disfunctionally. We must shake our fist in the air (with contempt and also a degree of theatrical defiance) and remind the Communists next door that our imperfect system, while lacking perfection is reformable not with the barrel of the gun or the muzzle of an AK-47, but with the kissing of certain asses, the whoring of certain public assets and the glossing over of certain issues. If we can overcome totalitarian government, we can overcome fake democracies as well!

We live in exciting times, no?

Watch out Ukraine, you haven't bested Taiwan just yet.
Stay tuned...