Realpolitik eases into Taiwan politics

The starting pistol for Taiwan’s January 2024 presidential election has been fired, with the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) declaring Vice-President William Lai as their Presidential candidate. 

The ex-Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je has declared as candidate for the four year-old Taiwan People's Party (TPP) and Terry Gou has thrown his hat in the ring to represent Kuomintang (KMT), although the party has yet to choose its official contender.

Rather than a proper war of words it has all kicked off with the more usual pussy-footing around semantics that has for so long been the hallmark of Taiwan politics.

Former Premier William Lai once said in the Legislative Yuan, "I am indeed a worker for Taiwan independence," and also "the 1992 Consensus has no consensus at all." Lai has said Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country, which obviously antagonised Beijing. 

The rage-filled government mouthpiece the Global Times criticised Lai's "extreme presumptuous attitude" and threatened to ask the Chinese government to use the "Anti-Secession Law" to issue a "global arrest warrant" against Lai.

So all the usual bluster and tub-thumping over the all too sensitive ‘I’ word but it is notable that Lai’s comments softened since. He said that it was out of respect for Zheng Nanrong, "I am indeed a worker for Taiwan independence, but compared to Mr. Zheng Nanrong, I am just a follower of Taiwan independence, and follow the ideas of our predecessors to carry out this work.”

Politicians have to be flexible in their sometimes vain efforts to keep as much of the electorate on-side as possible. A vocal pro-Independence DDP candidate may well put off voters who are worried about hard-line action from China and would not vote for a party who they see as likely to anger the mainland. On the other hand many DDP voters do not want closer ties with China and would be put off if the prospective President was too conciliatory towards our 'friends' to the West.

What we see, and have seen, in Taiwan politics is Realpolitik which is a system of politics or principles based on practical, rather than moral or ideological considerations. Realpolitik is the idea that the world is ruthless and you have to act realistically, even if it causes other things to happen that are bad, or decisions have to be made that upset your people.

Broadly speaking, it is statecraft where the pragmatic triumphs over dogma.  

The KMT is on a similar hook when it comes to the 1992 Consensus and "one China, different interpretations" In other words the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China agree that there is one China, but disagree about what "China" means.

It is a ridiculous spaghetti of meaningless words that leaves most right thinking people scratching their heads, but is deeply ingrained in the KMT’s psyche and underpins the notion both at home and abroad that the party is pro-China.  

As the KMT ponders its choice of Presidential candidate, you have to wonder if they might be considering if a dogmatic stance on the 92 Consensus might do it damage in 2024 when people head to the ballot boxes. Would a shift away be enough to convince those who do not want closer ties with China to safely vote for the KMT.

It seems KMT liberals already want to set the 92 Consensus aside but it appears not to have been popular with others in the party. That said, former KMT President Ma Ying-jeou’s recent trip to China which can only be described as fawning and servile, must be worrying campaign managers as it sends a strong, albeit unofficial, message to the voting public that the KMT is quietly but  aggressively pro-China. They don’t seem to have done much to distance themselves from Ma’s comments during the trip. 

Its campaign managers must also be concerned about the Taiwan People's Party splitting the KMT vote as it would seem the former mayor would benefit more from disaffected KMT voters than disaffected DPP voters. 

The addition of the TPP into the mix in January 2024 could throw a spanner in the works. Ko has pretty much said he is happy to play a spoiling role in Taiwan politics and, while he hasn’t said as much, would love to be the King-Maker in any coalition negotiations. 

This would not be dissimilar to the situation faced by the United Kingdom’s (UK) David Cameron in the 2010 election where a narrow victory meant he had to share power with the third largest party, the Liberal Democrats. The power sharing took the form of the Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition with Cameron as Prime Minister and Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister. 

I should hastily add that such a situation looks extremely unlikely to occur in Taiwan given current opinion polls are leaning quite heavily towards the DPP.

But as British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said in 1964 “A week is a long time in politics” and much could happen in the coming nine months. Something drastic could happen to upset the apple cart. 

One can only wonder what would happen if the KMT openly abandoned its stance on the 92 Consensus? Such an apparently dramatic move has worked in the past, most notably for Tony Blair’s Labour Party in the run up to the 1997 UK general election. 

Blair dragged the Labour party away from the left towards the centre of British politics by abandoning Clause 4 which was enshrined in the Labour Party Rule Book. It was widely seen as the Labour Party's commitment to socialism, even though the word "socialism" is not explicitly mentioned.

Blair battled within the party to rewrite Clause 4 and eventually won. It was the rebranded New Labour, and won a resounding victory at the 1997 general election, crushing the right-wing Conservatives and going on to win three more elections and an unbroken 13 years in power.  It certainly was not the only factor in the huge victory but it succeeded in making the party more electable as far as the voters were concerned. 

Blair’s brave and pragmatic move to rid himself of old left-wing party dogma that had been in the Labour Party rule book for eighty years was risky. It certainly upset many in his party and Labour voters across the land but was Realpolitik in action, and worked.

As far as Realpolitik is concerned, the DPP’s Lai emphasised there is no question of Taiwan's unification or independence, pointing out that Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent country and does not need to be independent separately. 

At this stage we can only guess whether the KMT are brave enough to consider a similar move. 

Tinkerty Tonk

Honduras Hiatus

(中文在下方)

I really don’t understand the furore over Honduras ending 82 years of diplomatic ties with Taiwan, or the other tiny counties that have done the same in the recent past.

It’s only ever been about money and when these poor countries don’t get it they just go begging elsewhere and, of course, China pays up. It’s easy to buy false friends. The rare exception is Lithuania which appears to be genuine in its relationship with Taiwan.   

My wife told me we had 11 eggs in the fridge, I disagreed and said we had 12… did we have a big row about it? No, because it makes little or no difference either way?

So Honduras has switched, so what? It is a small country with no political clout anywhere in the world, a population of less than half that of Taiwan and a nominal GDP of just $31 billion vs Taiwan’s $830 billion. Little wonder they need money and you can’t blame them for looking elsewhere. 

Taiwan should concentrate on building a deeper relationship with a friend that can actually help it, the United States. Everything else is just a distraction.

Tinkerty Tonk... 

我真的不明白宏都拉斯結束與台灣的外交關係，或近年來台灣與其他小國斷絕外交關係的紛擾。

這一直都只是錢的問題，當這些貧窮國家得不到錢時，他們就會到別處乞討，當然，中國會付出代價。假朋友很容易買到，罕見的例外是立陶宛，她與台灣的關係似乎是真誠的。

如果我家那頭常常黏在天花板上氣噗噗的貓告訴我，冰箱裡有 11 個雞蛋，我不同意並說冰箱裡有 12 個…… 我們需要為此吵架嗎？ 不會，因為 11 個或是 12 個，對我們實際上都沒有區別。

所以和宏都拉斯的關係改變了，那又如何？ 那是一個在世界任何地方都沒有政治影響力的小國，人口不到台灣的一半，名目 GDP 僅為 310 億美元，而台灣為 8300 億美元。難怪他們需要錢，而且你不能怪他們去別處找錢。

台灣應該把精力集中在真正能幫助台灣的朋友，例如美國，和他們建立更深厚的關係。其他一切，都只是枝節末微的干擾而已。

掰掰。

(祝蔡英文訪美順利！這句是我孟買春秋喬伊斯本人加的)

Billy Big Banana

(中文在下方)

Some people in a position of power get so affected by the environment they inhabit that their grip on the realities of normal life ebb away. At the same time the tide of their ego, sense of entitlement and sense of importance washes in. 

The way most journalists treat them with a degree of respect only serves to boost their conceit even more. In their heads, nothing is ever more important than them. 

They strut around like Billy Big Banana pontificating on subjects they know nothing about and gaslight the public on make-believe issues actually believing their God-like status in society somehow makes it OK to lie and misdirect. 

There are only a few who do this, thank God. You know who they are. 

But it worries me they seem to constantly get away and the press does not call them out in any kind of effective or meaningful way.

My hope is this unholy cabal of individuals will be soon be properly exposed for what and who they are.

Tinkerty Tonk...

一些處於權力地位的人因為受到他們所處環境的影響，他們的自我、權利感和重要性無限膨脹，最後他們逐漸無法面對現實，以為自己就是那麼重要。

大多數記者以一定程度的尊重對待這些政治人物，但這只是進一步助長他們的自負傲慢。在這些人的腦海裡，沒有什麼比自己更重要。

他們就像比利大香蕉 (Billy Big Banana 給可笑自我膨脹的人取的名字) 一樣，大搖大擺地談論他們一無所知的話題，並在虛構的議題上煽動民眾，進而讓民眾誤信他們自以為在社會中如上帝般的地位，隨意撒謊和誤導。

感謝上帝，只有少數人這樣做，你知道他們是誰。

但讓我擔心的是，他們似乎總是可以毫髮無傷全身而退，媒體並沒有以任何有效或有意義的方式把他們揪出來。

我希望這些邪惡的人的真面目，能夠很快地被正確揭穿。

掰掰。

Houdini the Fei Fei - doomed by official incompetence

(中文在下方)

Sadly for Houdini the Fei Fei, Taiwan’s famous escape artist and fugitive, his days on the run came to an abrupt end last week in a maelstrom of official misunderstanding and incompetence.

Alec Issigonis, designer of the Mini car in 1959, famously said, “A camel is a horse designed by committee.” The Mini became one of the most successful cars of all time.

So he knew a thing or two about design and outcomes. 

Sadly, the simple task of a capture of an escaped Baboon was organised by a committee of local officials. 

The miserable demise of Houdini who was shot to death in a rural homestead by an overzealous hunter acting on behalf of the local council, has been mourned across the country. It is a timely reminder that we are effectively governed on many levels by incompetents. 

There will, of course, be an inquiry, but it is obvious that the myriad people involved in the hunt were not communicating properly with each other. There was no clear chain of command, instructions as to the required outcome were not passed down and confusion reigned for days before the tragic outcome.  

Compounding all this was the unseemly rush to claim credit for Houdini’s capture to the extent of congratulatory selfies being taken over his dead body as he lay sadly curled up in a net, presumably bleeding out.

These were soon replaced by pictures of officials bowing in apology over Houdini’s flower-draped ‘coffin’. What an unedifying display of official self-aggrandisement one minute, quickly replaced with an admission of utter uselessness on the other. 

Poor Houdini never really stood a chance against these buffoons who were apparently more interested in their own image than they were in a positive outcome in terms of both public safety and the interests of a member of a non-native animal far from its natural home. 

Unfortunately there is a deficiency of analytical thinking skills across all levels of officialdom which never ceases to depress us all. It does, of course, also exist in the commercial world but at least there incompetent people tend to be weeded out more quickly as the level of accountability tends to be much higher. Companies just can’t survive if staff are ineffective.

I was a director of a small company which was an offshoot of the multinational company I worked for and believe me, the Director’s Responsibility Manual is huge. It contains legal requirements on behaviour and you can end up in court if you are negligent or slipshod in the role.    

 

Sadly for us taxpayers, a lot of officials, particularly at lower levels of the administration are more able to more easily hide in the herd of those around them, much like Wildebeest and shoal fish seek safety in numbers to confuse and baffle predators. 

Ministers and Heads of Departments resign and take ultimate responsibility when something goes wrong on their particular patch. Take the Puyuma train crash in 2018 when Minister of Communications Wu Hongmou resigned two months after the incident. From what I have read about the disaster many of Wu’s underlings were held accountable for the incident but he rightly resigned because he was in charge when it happened, although he was not directly involved in it’s cause. 

That said, the trend of stepping up, taking responsibility, being accountable and acting ethically is ebbing away and I hope this does not happen in Taiwan, although I fear it will given the more unscrupulous actions of some politicians in the recent past. As I have written before some are taking their lead from the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson who brazenly dish out blame for failure to anyone but themselves. 

A phrase far more prevalent in the UK media recently has been “Mr A pushes Mr B under a  bus”. Which is generally applied to a politician who has dumped blame on an underling for a mistake they were ultimately accountable for.

After Prime Minister Liz Truss made a huge mistake in pushing for massive tax cuts the country could not afford crashed financial markets and was forced into an embarrassing U-turn, she simply blamed Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, and refused to take responsibility. 

“Truss throws Kwasi Kwarteng under a bus” shouted the Evening Standard newspaper front page the same day. Truss resigned soon after, but nevertheless she tried to shift the blame to Kwerteng in an attempt to survive.

Does former president Trump throw people under a bus to avoid being accountable? Just ask his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani who is facing a $2.7 billion lawsuit for defending Trump’s conspiracy theories over vote rigging during the 2020 election. Or his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen who is currently giving evidence to the grand jury investigating the former president after doing three years in prison for Trump related crimes.   

It’s all part of the post-truth and lack of accountability era we live in and I would hate to see that infection gaining a larger foothold on these shores.

Errors of judgement have always happened and will continue to happen. There are names for it. In Britain and America it is commonly known as Murphy’s Law which holds that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. (It is really an aphorism but is attributed to many different people).

In military slang S.N.A.F.U (Situation Normal - All F**ked Up, or more politely Situation Normal - All Fouled Up) is defined in the dictionary as meaning a situation marked by errors or confusion.

In the commercial world I inhabited for most of my career, goals were clearly set and thought given to how to achieve that goal and various ‘owners’ assigned for the various stages involved who were accountable for their part and also the end result. The overall project would have a single ‘owner’ who would be accountable for the outcome, be it positive or negative.   

You have to wonder, when you look at the apparent chaotic way some politicians and officials approach problems, whether they are lazy, do not care, or more interested in covering their tracks in case there is a S.N.A.F.U.

政治社會

狒狒胡迪尼的啟示：官方無能造成的悲劇

Phil Smith 2023 年 3 月 31 日 597 人閱讀

胡迪尼（Harry Houdini, 1874-1926）是一位匈牙利裔美國魔術師和特技演員，以逃脫表演而流傳後世，我們姑且把最近不幸在台灣辭世的狒狒取名為胡迪尼。

逃脫藝術家狒狒胡迪尼最近佔據了台灣網路和媒體的版面，給人們在無趣的日常中帶來許多歡樂。但在官方誤解與無能的漩渦中，最後胡迪尼跑進桃園一間民宅，被自述為受僱於一個地方政府的獵人槍殺。

胡迪尼戲劇性的離世在台灣引起廣泛的震驚和哀悼，在我看來，這是一個及時的提醒：在許多層面上，我們都只是被無能者治理，而且他們爭相推諉責任。

群體決策可能的盲點

1959年Mini的設計師依斯哥尼斯（Alec Issigonis）有句名言：駱駝是委員會設計的馬（A camel is a horse designed by a committee）。意思是委員會常常將太多相互衝突或缺乏經驗的意見，納入單項計劃之中，精準批評了群體決策以及抽象或無關的管理主義。Mini是有史以來最成功的汽車之一。

胡迪尼死亡事件當然會有個調查，也會有個結論到底這是如何發生的，但很明顯參與尋找胡迪尼的無數人，彼此之間應該沒有好好的溝通，沒有明確的指揮鏈與指引，或是關於預計結果所需的指示，從來沒有清楚下達。可以想見悲劇發生之前的幾天裡，混亂一直存在。

讓這一切雪上加霜的是，胡迪尼被尋穫後，官員急於聲稱那是自己的功勞，以至於當胡迪尼可憐地蜷縮在一張網中時，可能正在大量流血的他竟然成為自拍的目標。

而這些炫耀的自拍，很快就被官員們向胡迪尼棺材獻花行禮的照片取代了；前一分鐘得意洋洋自我膨脹，下一分鐘灰頭土臉完全無用。

可憐的胡迪尼從未真正有機會與這些小丑對抗，這些小丑顯然對自己的形象更感興趣，他們不在乎公共安全，或是那些遠離自然家園的非本土動物。

各級官場都缺乏分析的思維能力，真是令人感到沮喪。當然這也存在於商業世界，但至少在商業世界，不稱職的人往往會很快被淘汰，因為這些公司對責任的要求往往比較高，因為如果員工效率低下，公司將無法生存。

我曾經是一家小公司的董事，那是路透社的一家當地分支機構，相信我，董事的責任手冊非常厚，包含對所有行為的法律要求。如果你在這個角色中疏忽或馬虎，最終可能會上法庭。

低階官員極易躲藏在人群中

對我們納稅人來說可悲的是，許多官員，尤其是級別較低的政府官員，更容易隱藏在他們周圍的人群中，就像牛羚和淺灘魚為了避免捕食者，就躲藏在大數量的同類中來尋求庇護。

出現問題時，通常部長和部門負責人辭職並承擔最終責任。我搜尋到的資料顯示在 2018 年，台灣交通部長吳宏謀在普悠瑪火車事故發生兩個月後辭職。 2021年太魯閣號出軌事件後，交通部長林佳龍一樣辭職。這些辭職是正確的，因為他們在事故發生時負責，儘管他沒有直接參與事故的起因。

正如我之前多次所寫，目前我們看見的是挺身而出、承擔責任、問責和道德行事的趨勢，正在世界各地漸漸消退。例如美國前總統川普（Donald Trump）和英國前首相強生（Boris Johnson），他們總是厚顏無恥地將失敗的責任推給除了他們自己以外的任何人。我希望這不會在台灣發生，但是鑑於最近一些政客肆無忌憚的行為，我想台灣也躲不過。

最近在英國媒體很流行的一句話是：A先生將B先生推到公共汽車輪下。這適用於將責任歸咎於下屬的政客，而需要要為錯誤負責的其實是他們。

政客常將其他人扔到公共汽車輪下

例如英國前首相特拉斯（Liz Truss）在推動大規模減稅方面犯下巨大錯誤，導致金融市場無法承受幾近崩潰，接著被迫陷入尷尬的政策大轉彎，然而她指責財政部長克瓦騰（Kwasi Kwarteng），拒絕承擔責任。

晚報頭條是：特拉斯將克瓦騰扔到一輛公共汽車輪下！之後特拉斯很快就辭職了，但她仍然試圖將責任推給克瓦騰，以求在日後在政壇繼續生存。

美國前總統川普會把人扔到公共汽車下以避免被追究責任嗎？ 問問他的前律師朱利安尼（Rudy Giuliani） 就知道了。他因為川普在 2020 年大選期間操縱選票的陰謀論辯護，現在正面臨 27 億美元的訴訟。或者他的前經紀人和律師科恩（Michael Cohen），他因與川普有關的罪行被判入獄三年後，目前正在向調查川普的大陪審團提供證據。

這都是我們生活的後真相和缺乏問責制時代的一部分，我不願意看到這種感染在台灣獲得更大的立足點。

然而判斷錯誤一直都在發生，而且還會繼續發生。在英國和美國被稱為墨菲定律（Murphy’s Law），這個定律認為任何可能出錯的事情，都會出錯。

在我職業生涯的大部分時間裡，我都生活在商業世界中，工作上明確設定了目標，必須考慮如何實現該目標，並為所涉及的各個階段分配了各種負責任的人，他們必須對自己的職責和最終結果負責，無論是正面或是負面的結果。

在軍事俚語中，S.N.A.F.U（Situation Normal – All F**ked Up，或比較禮貌的 Situation Normal – All Fouled Up）字面上的翻譯是一切正常，但其實全都搞砸了，意思是天翻地覆的混亂狀況。

你不得不懷疑，當你看到一些政客和官員處理問題的明顯混亂方式時，他們是否懶惰不關心，或者其實他們只是想要掩蓋他們的留下的踪跡不要被察覺，以防萬一出現 S.N.A.F.U.