"Governments should be afraid of their people."

So says the bold anarchist/revolutionary V, in the recent movie "V for Vendetta."

The film itself while mediocre (overly simplistic and rushed) made me think:
How do democracies begin to fail (what are the parameters of democratic failure)?
When do citizen stakeholders lose a stake in "their" governments (are governments owned or hired)?
When do governments become severed from the people in which they are meant to serve?
Is anarchy really a completely separate state from "normalcy"?

I ask these questions in the light of recent scandals in Taiwan which have been connected to members of the First Family. These involve widespread incidents of insider trading, the purchasing of key positions in government and of course, kickbacks. The purpose here is not to pass judgment on these crimes, and their impact on how I view the current government's ability to run the country, but rather to take another view on how the government itself has viewed itself in this whole matter.

Vice-President Annette Lu said last week that while these scandals have hurt the people's trust in the government, she believed that the judiciary, by acting as a means of dispensing justice to the above crimes could restore people's faith in the state. I think Lu and others like her need to get off their high horses! It's a disturbing discourse: Pro-independence, anti-corruption/anti-martial law, human rights activists brought on Taiwan's democratization-->They come to power by defeating a corrupt, alien regime--->Scandals are linked to members of the new ruling party and First Family-->Taiwan's democratizers (despite resistence from annoying stone-walling opposition parties who can never be rid of their corrupt past) are now Taiwan's self-annointed corruption busters.

This illustrates a diseased governmental mindset. It's analogous to: "The brain is hemorraging, but at least our immune system tells us that there's something wrong! This proves that everything is a-ok, because we can admit that something is wrong! Wahoo!!!" Vice President Lu and those in the government who share the view that "at least we're uncovering these scandals now whereas in the KMT-era (in that bygone age where everything was corrupt and Democracy Did Not Exist and Life was Generally Bad) nothing would have been done at all" need to get something straight: Stop using the past as a means of advancing your pathetic attempts at justifying your botched efforts to create a New Era in Taiwanese History!

Sure, we're thankful of democratic insititutions and a (scandously) free press that does tabloid muck-raking, but what you need to do is move beyond this point. Your administration is ending in two years. You have always blamed Beijing and its "Fifth Column Pan-Blue Chinese Pigs," and now even Washington for your failures, but why haven't you considered the apathy to which your agenda has been received in your own backyard? Even the sacred breeding grounds of Taiwanese democracy such as Chiayi-city and Ilan County have turncoated in your second term. Why can't you realize that your pompous self-narration of Taiwanese democratic evolution has failed ulimately to give tangible means for Taiwanese citizens to compete in an ever competitive international market?

What are you afraid of? Fear the people Now and you will not cower because of tomorrow's History lesson or the screetching tires of SNG news van.

Above all: Get off the aloof-country bumpkin victimization discourse and remember those people who rode upon high hopes that you'd do Something Different back in 2000.