My Take | Secessionists’ independence call is demagogy, not democracy
- Unless Taiwan alters its constitution and Cross-Strait Act, or carries out coup or referendum, such claims are not only dangerous but also illegal
Taiwan Vice-President William Lai Ching-te will no doubt be gratified. A new survey finds that up to 60 per cent of Americans are willing to go to war against mainland China over the island.
I don’t know about you but that survey result, if accurate, should scare the living daylights out of anyone who knows anything about cross-strait relations. The poll was carried out by the New York-based Eurasia Group Foundation.
Lai, presidential front runner for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has been on the campaign trail telling party faithful that Taiwan secessionism is no crime but a duty. That means he and the DPP will never accept the “1992 consensus”, by which the island and the mainland have reached an understanding of the “one China” principle while tacitly respecting their differences in interpreting it.
Rather absurdly, Lai claims accepting the consensus is equivalent to giving up the island’s sovereignty. But, wait a minute, how can you give up or abandon something if you never had it in the first place?
Lai told his audience in Kaohsiung this week: “Sovereignty is like ownership of property. You can protect the property only if you have the ownership. Without sovereignty, you lose land deeds, property ownership, democracy and human rights.
“Taiwan is an independent nation, with sovereignty belonging to the 23.5 million people who live there. It does not belong to China or other nations.”
Lai’s declarations may be appealing to some Taiwanese voters and DPP backers in the United States. But the thing is, while they sound democratic, they actually breach Taiwan’s very own democratic, legal and constitutional systems. In a word, it’s not democracy Lai and his cronies are exercising, but demagogy.
