On sexual harassment, the KMT remains unaccountable for their own actions

I don't have a good photo, even a metaphorical one, so please enjoy a Tainan street scene.

My second job in Taiwan was arguably the worst job I've ever had. It was worse than my "they say we're teachers but it's actually kind of like working at the Gap" job at one of the big chain cram schools, if you can imagine such a thing. I won't name them because they're litigious, and I also tend not to tell the full story -- it involves treating my husband in an unacceptable way -- without a drink in hand.

It wasn't always a nightmare; the first few years were solidly okay, perhaps even enjoyable. Then they changed office managers and I started noticing a pattern I couldn't quite elucidate then, but understand better now: the inability of anyone in the office to be accountable for the most minor of mistakes, let alone apologize or do anything proactively to address the error.

Scheduled for three weeks straight -- including weekends -- despite specifically requesting that not happen? Let's not point fingers, can you just do us this favor? A teacher was not informed of a class cancellation? I don't recall. Random errors appearing in teaching materials, to the point of occasional incomprehensibility? No, you don't understand, that's just a different variety of English. 

There was also a rumor that another teacher was accused of acting inappropriately toward female (adult) students and admitted as much to management. I say "rumor" because I didn't witness it, but I was told by the person accused. He showed no outward guilt, and seemed pleased that there were no repercussions. I knew then that I would leave as soon as possible (there were other reasons, but this was a major catalyst). 

We all make mistakes, and I started out apologizing for mine, however minor. I soon realized that an apology was considered a deep admission of guilt: you'd get a long talking-to in a meeting they were frequently late for (forcing you to wait twenty minutes to an hour for a lecture you didn't need as you'd already acknowledged fault).

Rarely was anyone fired, but if you took accountability rather than making excuses and refusing to admit fault, you felt like you were on constant probation.

My purpose here isn't to make them look bad (which is part of why I won't name them), but to tell a small slice of my story while making a larger point about small-scale cultures where accountability and apology aren't the first steps to reconciliation and rectification, but an opening to heap shame on the person admitting fault.

I'd let these memories sink into the morass of things best not fixated on, only to have them come roaring back as I watch the various political parties rush to address their past mistakes in dealing with sexual harassment. I thought this was just the memory of that one guy who seemed proud that he was making female students feel uncomfortable, but my subconscious made the connection before I did. It wasn't that one incident, it was the whole culture of refusing to acknowledge mistakes, let alone admit them or, heaven forfend, apologize. 

It shows strength of character to admit error, take accountability, apologize, rectify the situation if possible and take action to ensure it doesn't happen again. I  learned this in my twenties -- later than I should have -- and it's everyone's duty as adults to do the same. 

That's why it bothers me that as this Not-Really-#MeToo movement unfolds, I mostly feel dismay. 

On the DPP side, people rightfully lost their jobs. Their mistakes can never be fully rectified, but at least there were eventual consequences to their actions. Lin Fei-fan, the former Sunflower leader accused by the media of knowing about the cover-up of the Women's Department case, has ended his candidacy for the legislature. There have been some serious shake-ups at the DPP -- not serious enough, but it's a start.

It's unclear why exactly he quit the race. Perhaps the party decided it was best to shelve him for a future race, perhaps he was a sacrificial lamb, or perhaps he himself decided it was the best course of action in terms of being accountable, or his future political prospects (or both). The DPP absolved him of responsibility, so I suspect the decision was ultimately his own. 

Although it's not for me to say whether it's the right or wrong decision, I admit I'm sad to see Lin drop out. Not following up on the case in question was indeed a mistake, but crucially, to me, he's one of the only people embroiled in this incident to have acknowledged as much and apologized. I don't think his actions are in line with someone who committed a cover-up.

Lin acted like an adult: he was the supervisor at the time, so he decided the buck stopped with him and that he should be held, in his words, to a higher standard. Accountability is hard and it takes guts to apologize, but it's the right thing to do. It's what I want to see in Taiwan's elected leaders.

This is not to absolve the entire DPP. To put it colloquially, they fucked up real bad. he only way out of that is to figure out what went wrong and fix broken mechanisms so it doesn't happen again. Lin himself has said as much repeatedly.

The KMT, on the other hand, has been posturing quite a lot on their commitment to gender equality and a harassment-free culture, but I've yet to see much in the way of real consequences for the many, many cases that have occurred within the party.

New Taipei mayor and presidential candidate Hou You-yi was in charge when a city employee committed suicide over sexual harassment in the city's health bureau. Although the supervisory committee said the bureau handled the case incorrectly, Hou stated that the bureau acted "with humility", but has not apologized or accepted any sort of accountability for the goings-on in his administration, and is accused of trying to bury the news.

Hou, of course, is still the KMT presidential candidate. He's spent a lot of time criticizing the DPP, which the DPP has called hypocritical (Presidential candidate Lai Ching-te called Hou the "last one who can criticize"). 

If Lin had stayed in the race, he would have faced off against current KMT legislator Wang Hong-wei, who narrowly beat Enoch Wu for the seat. The DPP clearly thinks this district is winnable, seeing as they keep throwing star power at it. Wang, as you might have guessed, called on Lin to withdraw from the race. Then she mocked his apology and withdrawal statement as being for the "social disturbance" the incident has caused rather than his own actions (Lin has expressed regret for his actions multiple times), as well as calling her out for "double standards and political manipulation". 

Apparently, Wang didn't think this was fair. Is she right? Did Lin err in calling her duplicitous rather than focusing all of the shame on himself? To determine that, let's look at Wang's actions more broadly.

KMT legislator and former Lienchiang (Matsu) county magistrate Chen Huseh-sheng was found guilty of sexually harassing DPP legislator Fan Yun and ordered to pay NT$80,000. Fan expressed unhappiness with the verdict; it's a small fine well within Chen's means to pay, and he remains in the legislature where Fan has said she feels "disgusted" to have to see him. 

Wang has said asking Chen to resign would be "inappropriate", backing that up with a whole truckload of nonsense. She said there are "many forms of sexual harassment, and some of them are despicable...such as abuse of power", which this was not, and that Chen's case is "worthy of vigilance" but did not merit asking for his resignation. 

In other words, an actual sexual harasser found guilty in a court of law should not have to resign because "sexual harassment takes many forms" and this one was not "despicable" enough, but Lin -- who has never been accused of sexual harassment -- should drop out of the race because he didn't follow up on a case that was reported to him as resolved?

Yep, that's a double standard.

The other high-profile case in the KMT revolves around Hualien legislator, convicted criminal and all-around asshat Fu Kun-chi, who was accused of sexual harassment by a media personality while he was serving as Hualien county magistrate. The comment section of the initial post included several people pointing out that he was a known serial offender.

While the KMT has said they will investigate the issue, Fu's office refuses to make any meaningful comment, and former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-pin, whom the victim named as a witness, has said he "doesn't have a clear memory" of what happened. 

Wang Hong-wei, after spending so much time attacking Lin Fei-fan, apparently has no energy left to say a single goddamn thing about Fu Kun-chi. 

I'd certainly call that a double standard too, and I'm not the only one saying so. Wang and other KMT members sure talk a lot about not tolerating sexual harassment, but when sexual harassment in their own party comes to light, they seem pretty tolerant to me. I guess it's easy to tolerate anything if you "don't have a clear memory". 

You know who else in the KMT nobody seems to have a thing to say about? Taipei deputy mayor Lin Yihua. Her former office director, Lin Tinglin, was found guilty of rape in 2021. The court decided that although Mr. Lin had resigned before the incident took place, he was still Lin Yihua's employee as he continued to volunteer at her office and wear a campaign vest bearing her name. Lin Yihua was found jointly responsible for Mr. Lin's conduct and forced to pay part of the settlement.

Not only did Mr. Lin deny the allegations, appeal the ruling, call himself the victim and say the relationship was "consensual", but Lin Yihua herself tried to argue that she was not responsible as the perpetrator had technically already resigned.

Does Wang Hong-wei or anyone at all in the KMT care to ask Lin Yihua to step down for failing to be accountable for the actions of her office staff? No. She remains a rising political star in the KMT.

I will freely admit my bias against the KMT -- I just can't get over that whole White Terror thing, not to mention their current pro-China leanings -- and it's true that they've launched an investigation into the handling of sexual assault allegations, promising the issue will be handled "satisfactorily". They've even put a few token women on the committee, while refusing to divulge anything about their background! 

Maybe I'm being unfair. I can't say for certain that the KMT's new bureaucratic this-n-that won't fix whatever is broken. Given their track record, however, their assurances plus NT$10 will buy a tea egg at 7-11. 

But I can say that the DPP has actually fired people over this, and pretty quickly too. Everything's still ticking along just like it always was at over at the KMT. When high-profile people actually get canned and those who helped cover for perpetrators step down from office, I'll believe that it means something.

The DPP is far from perfect, and I won't sit here like a brainless pine cone and insist they've done nothing wrong, or that there isn't something very broken in their own male-dominated party culture. But Lin Fei-fan apologized, reflected, stood up and took the hit like an adult. When Chen Hsueh-sheng and Fu Kun-chi are made to step down and Hou You-yi and Lin Yi-hua face similar accountability, maybe I'll believe that the KMT might turn a corner, too. 

Chillin’ at the Freddy Lim rally

Tsai, Freddy Lim and Lin Fei-fan - and I think that's Lai Pin-yu

Update: now with photos! 

I really admire people who have the stomach to attend rallies for the bad guys - I just can’t do it. As in, it directly affects my mental health and I stay away for my own well-being. Considering this, while everyone was reporting on the big Han rally last night, I went over to Freddy Lim’s rally outside Longshan Temple. 

Lin Fei-fan takes the stage

First, I urge people not to compare these two rallies. Han’s big rally - which absolutely didn’t reach 700,000 people as they claim - was for a presidential candidate who organized attendees from all over the country (that’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just that it’s a national audience - though it’s worth noting that it seems to be the same people bussed everywhere). Lim is a legislative candidate, not a presidential one, and this was a local rally with local flavor. 

A cute sign for Tsai

The turnout was solid

In fact, if you compare Freddy’s rally a few weeks ago on the same Ketagalan Boulevard site as Han’s, you’ll note that a (mere) legislative candidate was able to fill the entire boulevard. A presidential candidate did that, and filled most (but not all) of the Jingfu Gate circle - if you look at pictures, there was still space to move around. That’s actually impressive...for Freddy. For Han, this turnout is good - at least it’s not embarrassing - but it actually compares poorly against Lim and Han’s own previous rallies.

How do I know it wasn’t 700,000? The Sunflowers claimed 500,000 - I’m not sure about that number, but whatever - and you couldn’t even approach Jingfu Gate. We were stuck way back by the National Concert Hall. 

And people seemed genuinely excited for Tsai and Lim

In any case, I headed to Freddy’s rally. As I got off the MRT, I grabbed my Freddy flag - you’re not supposed to wave those on the MRT as political campaigning is banned there, but it was in the way of my keys and metro card - and asked a bunch of Han supporters in front of the door to please let me off the train. Two women carrying ROC/Han flags quite deliberately not only did not move (although there was space, or they could have stepped off the train briefly), but actively blocked me. One sort of arm-nudged her friend to be more in my way! 

I found this behavior extremely rude, especially as I made a particular effort to sound especially polite to them in the beginning. In the end I was unable to get around them, and had to push through. I gave them a sharp “RUDE!” in Chinese as I did. If this is what Han supporters are like, I’m happy to be on the other side. 

The rally itself had a lot more local flavor than the Chthonic concert on Ketagalan. This was surely deliberate strategy. That concert was for general support, and for the youth vote. This was for the uncles and aunties in his actual neighborhood. The music was very old-school Taiwanese, the speeches were full of piss and vinegar (though some were more exciting than others) and were conducted almost entirely in Taiwanese, with a little Mandarin peeking through. Smoke machines, disco lights, background music - this rally had it all. It was less polished than the previous one, and that was entirely intentional. 

It was extremely crowded, a good turnout for a legislative candidate

The turnout was good - all seats were taken, plus a large standing crowd along the entire perimeter. Freddy goods - stickers, towels, keychains, t-shirts - sold at a good clip. Crucially, the turnout wasn’t just young people. In fact, I was in a sea of middle-aged and older folks who were all enthusiastic. That’s good news for Freddy, who needs this ‘older’ vote to keep Wanhua. These are the folks Lin Yu-fang could depend on, so it’s good to see that Freddy is netting at least some of them. Hopefully enough to win. The rally took up the entire length of Guangzhou Road outside the temple and towards the market at the far end, spilling onto the esplanade leading to the underground market entrance. I was hungry and thirsty, but there was absolutely no way to get to the Family Mart opposite. 

Speakers included legislative candidate Lai Ping-yu (known for her cosplay-inspired campaign), Premier Su Cheng-chang and his his signature raspy voice, DPP Deputy Secretary General and “guy in charge of mobilizing the youth” Lin Fei-fan, former Kaohsiung governor (now Vice Premier, yes? His roles seem to keep changing) Chen Chi-mai, Freddy Lim himself, and of course President Tsai. One of the musicians, who was very young, also spoke but I missed most of this as I was chatting with another young attendee. All of the folks who’ve been making the rounds speaking - Tsai, Lim, Lin - sounded a little hoarse. It’s been a long season. 

Really, I couldn't even get to the Family Mart

The speeches themselves were better than one might expect. Lin Fei-fan is known for being a good speaker, and he broke out his Taiwanese more than he has in the past (it is one of his native languages but you don’t hear it from him that often, he’s more likely to do public speaking in Mandarin). The gist of his speech - the Mandarin parts I could follow - were that Taiwan and Hong Kong are concurrently locked in a battle against China, and we are not going to let Taiwan become the next Hong Kong. “We don’t yield, we don’t kneel, we don’t walk on our knees,” he said, and I thought that was just great. 

Outside Longshan Temple

Towards the end he addressed some of the criticisms he’s received taking a position in the DPP, seeing as he’s so well-known for criticizing them. He said, “we know we haven’t done enough, we know we haven’t gone far enough, but we will, please give us a chance to do so” (not an exact translation). 

Freddy's speech

Typically, “we’re not good enough, we know that and we’ll do better” is not a great campaign tactic, but there’s something very old-school Taiwanese politics (that whole humility game, though it’s often performative) about it, and he’s the right person to deliver that message considering the criticism he’s endured. 

To be honest, I couldn’t follow a lot of the other mostly-Taiwanese speeches, though I think Freddy’s focused a bit more on local issues than he typically has. Tsai’s (in Mandarin) was pretty clear: One Country Two Systems will never work, Taiwan can never give up its sovereignty, the China threat is real, etc. etc.  She did better than usual, speaking with more clarity and emotion and less detachedness, wonkishness and repetitive call-and-response. This was a somewhat enjoyable speech, far more so than the one she gave on Ketagalan at the previous Freddy rally.

In fact, people seemed genuinely excited to see her, and genuinely energized by her speech. That's a win. 

I think the size of the Han rally gave the speakers renewed passion, and pushed them to speak with energy and emotion (well, except Chen Chi-mai, who always sounds a little removed and dorky, but honestly, I like him.) I wouldn’t call it nervousness, but everyone’s on edge as voting begins in a matter of hours. It felt like a final push, because it was one. 

Notably, after the rally ended, a group of Hong Kong protesters raised flags and shouted “Freedom for Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times” in Cantonese, attracting a sizeable crowd. Someone from the Statebuilding Party also waited for the rally to end to take out a microphone as volunteers lifted large posters and gave out tissues and stickers. He delivered an impassioned speech, and while Statebuilding is a little too close to nationalist for my taste, I appreciated their very grassroots, take-to-the-street strategy. In fact, that Hong Kongers and the Statebuilding Party felt this was a good rally to make an appearance made the whole thing feel very democratic. 

After all, all of these issues are connected - Hong Kong, Taiwan, what kind of country we want Taiwan to be - and the official speeches mirrored that. 

The KMT's Massive Cracks (and the DPP Firming Up)

One of the two parties has been putting their ears to the ground.
The other needs a hearing aid (perhaps literally). 

Nine months ago, if you'd asked me about Taiwanese electoral politics, I would have told you these things:

1.) The DPP is cracking up at exactly the moment that it needs to come together and show unity. As a result, the DPP are going to continue to be tainted by accusations that they're not good at administering once in power and are, at their core, just populist rabble-rousers (as friend and political analyst Donovan Smith put it) who are prone to infighting. 

2.) The KMT is going to unite behind Big Uncle Dirk, not because they all like each other, but because they see him as their only chance to win in 2020. Terry Gou will be pissed, but that's it. 

3.) Because of this, both parties are going to have trouble shoring up their youth credentials and future leaders, because both are 'older' parties. 

So I guess it's a good thing that nobody asks me about politics, because damn was I wrong. 

Now that the major parties have finalized (finally!) their revised party lists for proportional representation seats and their presidential candidates have chosen running mates, it sure looks to me that the DPP, against all odds, has managed to actually unite. On top of that, tapping her primary challenger, Lai Ching-te, as her running mate was a great way to really bring home that 'unity' message. I'm not a fan of Lai (I think he's a corrupt, self-serving opportunist) but I understand why he was chosen. 

The KMT, on the other hand, are the ones falling apart and come across as terrible, out-of-touch administrators. With Han saying things like "Tsai is fat and white [that is, corrupt and soft] and I'm dark and think [i.e. one of the everyday working people]", the KMT is sounding more and more like "populist rabble-rousers" compared to the DPP's well-considered governance. On top of that, the KMT party list exposes how much they - rather than the DPP as once seemed to be the case - are plagued by factional infighting. It's so bad that Han's own running mate, Simon "Who?" Chang, suggested that people vote for pan-blue third party candidates.

I don't actually want to talk much about the party lists though - plenty of people have already done that. All you really need to know is that the KMT's list, even revised, is such a massive joke, full of ancient 'Mainlanders' (people born in China or who identify as Chinese because they were born in Taiwan to Chinese parents not long after the 1949 diaspora). Revising it didn't really fix that, despite removing the guy who said independence supporters - so, most Taiwanese - should be beheaded, and Wu Dun-yih putting himself lower down on the list (putting himself on the list at all was craven and opportunistic). 

The DPP's list is problematic too, with not that many young candidates who could benefit from the exposure, and an indigenous TV host put at #1 and then revised off the list altogether. But nobody seems to be talking that much about it, because the KMT's absolute insult to the Taiwanese people is sucking up all the attention.

It's also worth noting that other than these blunders, the DPP party list seems designed to send a few clear messages: first, we are unified. Or, less generously, we are making sure all our key 'people' are happy for now. Second, we're tapping (experienced, older) experts. Or, also less generously, we actually aren't trying hard to shore up our youth support (though at least one nominee, Hung Shen-han 洪申翰, is under 40). Finally, we are willing to work with the Left (considering the inclusion of someone like Fan Yun). Or, again, less charitably: we are trying to absorb pan-green third parties so they cease to be a threat. 

Regarding that last one, though, I don't think there's a big practical difference between the two interpretations. To absorb those third parties, they pretty much have to accept lefties into their ranks. By recruiting lefties, they undermine those third parties. The difference is...what exactly?

But here's the thing - although the DPP party list doesn't skew particularly young or indigenous, I would argue that the DPP overall has done a solid job of shoring up its overall youth credentials. Hiring Sunflower luminary Lin Fei-fan, when it's well-known that the NPP also wanted him, was a baller move. Importantly, he was the one who chose the DPP over the NPP, for his own reasons - but his choice does send a message. Gaining the support of ex-NPP and now independent legislator Freddy Lim was also a win. In addition to Lin, the DPP has been attracting a fair number of people from the Sunflower generation. 

It's worth noting that this has been the DPP's plan since the 2014 Sunflower movement - they've always hoped to recruit these younger activists, though they did not immediately run them for office - and what we're seeing now, despite their party list skewing older, is the beginning of the fruition of that policy.

I wouldn't personally know, but I would be shocked if they aren't trying to grab the recent exodus from the NPP, too. I don't know if they'll be successful, but I can't imagine they won't try. With Fan Yun recruited, I'd be shocked if they weren't trying to bring the only Social Democratic Party politician ever elected (as far as I'm aware?), Miao Poya, into the fold. I'm not confident she'll bite, though.

It's also worth noting that, again, there is little practical difference between recruiting the more liberal members of this generation (including poaching or vacuuming up unhappy defectors from other parties) because the DPP is willing to move to the left a bit, and doing so simply to eradicate their pan-green challengers. 

The KMT, on the other hand, seems to have dug in its heels on being the Party of Your Grandparents (and Maybe Your Parents If They're Kind of Awful People.)

I suspect that this is because the DPP's core philosophy was never actually populist rabble-rousing: that sort of political rhetoric may be adopted by any party and is more of a quick-win strategy than a guiding ethos. They've always been the party borne of the Taiwanese democratization movement, which means they're the party more willing to consider a progressive way forward. Although they have their elders and social conservatives and have not always been on the more progressive or liberal side of every issue - and have just as much interest in keeping Taiwan locked into a system dominated by two major parties as the KMT - they've shown the capacity to evolve with the times. Passing immigration reform (unlikely in the Chen era, but one of the first things Tsai did) and same-sex marriage are clear indicators of that.

As a result, they have a core guiding ethos that has the capacity to attract the support of younger generations, even if the party doesn't always live up to its own ideals. Despite setbacks - the delay with passing same-sex marriage being just one - they can shore up their ranks with Millenial and Gen-Z recruits and hang on to youth support. Or at least, the potential is there.

It's not that the KMT doesn't want to attract the youth - I'm sure they'd love to get the votes of some imaginary "sons and daughters of China" (中華兒女). But, despite the occasional socially liberal move (for example, they were once the technocrat party which was actually more open to immigration than the then-Hoklo ethnonationalist DPP), their guiding ethos is one of political conservatism and authoritarianism. That's no surprise given their origin in Taiwan as an occupying force and then a military dictatorship.

What the DPP envisions for the future needs some tweaking, for sure. They really should back off on the useless drug war, and the death penalty has got to go. Same-sex marriage needs to evolve into full marriage equality. But their fundamental principles - a free, sovereign and democratic Taiwan in which everyone enjoys equal rights - is one that can carry to the future. 

The KMT - they want what exactly? From their nominee, you'd think it was allowing Chinese annexation. From their party list, some old-fashioned notion that Taiwanese are primarily Chinese or that the ROC could ever "retake the Mainland". Certainly, according to things Han and his wife have said, they're turning more socially conservative and especially hammering the "family values" and anti-immigrant rhetoric. A shame, as they were not always the more socially conservative party on every issue.

How do those beliefs carry to the future? They don't. The youth won't vote for any of that.

As a result, I can count the 'young' KMT future leaders who are publicly high-profile now on perhaps one hand, one of whom was left off the KMT party list. All of them are older than me (I'm in my late 30s - not exactly young). The DPP, on the other hand, has grown a much bigger stable. They might screw it up - one reason why the NPP fell apart, after all, were the Generation Xers running the show and not giving the Millenials and Gen-Z members enough opportunities or a big enough say. But for now, things are looking fine.

In short, I never thought I'd say that the DPP might actually maintain youth support rather than growing as gray, wrinkled and irrelevant as the KMT, but they're actually doing a pretty okay job of it.

This doesn't necessarily mean the KMT will lose, of course. Young people are not as reliable voters as older ones, and despite it being noxious, populist rhetoric is often effective. They probably will lose, but in this election cycle, their inability to attract the youth probably won't be the reason why. All of the work the DPP is doing to keep itself relevant is going to pay off one generation down the road more than it will now.

What scares me is that if the KMT does pull off an unlikely win, Taiwan is in a precarious enough position vis-a-vis China and the KMT has grown so much more 'red' and unificationist that the vision of Taiwan that the Taiwanese youth (mostly) want will never have time to blossom. Their parents and grandparents will put Taiwan on a road that their children never wanted. Rather than having the ability to build the country they do want once they become the most powerful voting bloc, they'll be forced to fight for their very survival instead. You know, like in Hong Kong.

In other words, I don't think Han will win, but if he does, I'm not sure Taiwan as a sovereign nation will survive it. And it's the youth who don't even like Han or the KMT who will pay the price for that. 

The Third Force we needed and the Third Force we got

I have no cover image so now is a good a time as any to say that I think my cat looks like Huang Kuo-chang

I said I didn't want to return to party politics for awhile, and I meant it. But then in the span of about 24 hours, Handy Chiu resigned as chair of the New Power Party and legislator Hung Tzu-yung left the party in much the same fashion as Freddy Lim two weeks ago.

There is a lot of speculation floating around about the details of why the NPP seems to be in nuclear meltdown mode, and I'm not able to offer any facts that you can't find elsewhere. What I can offer is bare-faced opinion, so here we go.

In the post-Sunflower era, the nascent Third Force needed two things. The first was to have a more collective structure - lots of people who broadly agree working together with no one 'personality' taking over. The second was to balance idealism with pragmatism. While there are people in the Third Force who would agree with this, unfortunately, they haven't been able to steer the movement in that direction.

The leadership needed to be more pluralistic - at the very least, the stars of the Third Force needed to be people who specifically wanted to cultivate and mentor emerging voices in the movement, so it never got to be too much about a few luminaries but instead continually populated with emerging young talent and new ideas.

There are Third Force public figures who take such a goal seriously, including Lin Fei-fan, the new deputy secretary general of the DPP, who had at one point intentionally stepped out of the spotlight, prioritized connecting with democracy activists across Asia, has shown that the DPP is willing to work with Third Force parties, and has said publicly that one of this goals is to foster and promote new voices so it's not all about certain personalities. (I think that last bit is published somewhere, but regardless he said it publicly at a panel at LSE last summer, which I attended.)

I'd venture that Lim is another such figure - he has sought to work with other legislators in the NPP rather than seeking to control the narrative, has fostered talent within the NPP, and has eschewed power he could have easily grabbed (when Huang Kuo-chang stepped down as party chair, the job was his for the taking. He didn't take it.) He has a slick and well-managed PR machine, but he uses it far differently than Huang. Even Handy Chiu, who wasn't chair of the NPP long enough to make an impression, seemed to seek compromise, discussion and a shared spotlight.

That's the attitude the NPP - and the whole Third Force - needed.

Sadly, that's not what they, or we, got.

Next to these more democratically-minded figures, there's Huang Kuo-chang. I won't sit here blasting the guy, because I don't know him personally (we met once, but only very briefly). But just a quick skim of NPP-related news will make clear that Huang is not only a major personality within the party, but also has a tendency to dominate it. In his lengthy Facebook manifesto, Wu Cheng referenced this explicitly.

I can also say that Huang did (and does) tend to dominate the NPP decision-making process and it did (and does) turn people off. It seems to me - barefaced opinion here - that this is not just that they lack a consensus on better alternatives, but because Huang is a dominant, controlling person. He may have tried to temper this tendency by stepping down as party chair, but it doesn't seem to have worked, and has definitely driven good people away.

So, since the NPP's founding, instead of this lovely utopian vision of collective voices, it feels like there's been a tug-of-war over whether to work towards true consensus, or just let it be the Huang Kuo-chang Show. From whether to push for a host of referendums (too many to link here) that not everyone fully supported to the failed (and pointless) hunger strike to whether or not to cooperate with Ko Wen-je or other Third Force parties, to whether or not to support Tsai's re-election bid, it's been years of Huang wanting to run the show. From what people have told me, there's arrogance aplenty as well.

As you might expect, this has caused people to become disenchanted and walk away. (Lin Fei-fan has said that Huang was not the reason why he didn't join the NPP, and relations between them are strong. I can't say if that's true or just something you say on camera, but I'd argue it doesn't matter - the overall trend is there.) 

That leads us to the second thing the NPP needed to be, but ultimately wasn't: a vanguard for the Third Force that wisely mixed idealism with pragmatism.

I've already said that the central issue with the NPP is a divide not between who supports whom outside of the party, whether that's Mayor Ko Wen-je or President Tsai Ing-wen, or whether or not to push for more referendums or hold a hunger strike or whatever the current 'issue' is, but rather all of these disagreements fall along a fault line of often-foolish idealism (led by Huang Kuo-chang and supported by Hsu Yung-ming) vs. guarded idealistic pragmatism (led by Freddy Lim and supported by Hung Tzu-yung). I could give a hundred examples, but let's just talk about one.

Despite strong arguments for supporting Tsai, Ing-wen for re-election, the NPP was unable to reach a consensus, I gather in great part because Huang was just not having it (he did threaten to leave if the NPP became a 'little green' after all.)

But here's the thing - and I've said this before:

The true progressives need to...realize firstly that not that many Taiwanese are as progressive as they are and their ideas are not shared by a majority of the population. That means more needs to be done to win over society. It means teaming up with the center, even if the center is slow to act. Doing so doesn't mean you have to support the center indefinitely. 

Or, as a very smart friend of mine once said, activists have to realize that change won't happen just because they march, protest, strike, write and occupy. Change happens because they do those things, bring their ideas to the rest of society and show the establishment that their causes enjoy some popularity and can be winning issues. Activism needs friends in the establishment to get things done, and the more progressive members of the Establishment need the activists to get society to care about those issues. In Taiwan, the activists need Tsai, and Tsai needs the activists. 

We're at a critical juncture now, where it's not hyperbole to say "this is do or die for Taiwan". I'll write more about this later, but electing a pro-Taiwan president now, as China is ramping up its disinformation, election interference and aggression campaigns as well as activating its latent networks to bully Taiwan into the fold, is of urgent importance. The top priority now is simple: Han Kuo-yu must be stopped. Lim, Lin and others understand this, and are willing to set aside differences with the less liberal DPP, but Huang and Hsu don't seem to get it. They're clinging to this idealist notion that in 2020, it is possible to undermine Tsai but not have Han win. And that's just not the case. It's fine to keep criticizing Tsai and the DPP, but damn it guys, do that after she wins. 

We needed a Third Force, and an NPP especially, that understood this and took the right side when the chips were down. We needed them to see that Tsai may not be perfect and it's necessary to continue to hold her and her party accountable, but that it would hurt Taiwan far worse to enable Han to win, however indirectly. We needed them to understand that their energy is best spent trying to win people to progressive causes while supporting the best possible viable candidate and establishment ally, rather than assuming they can do what they want because their ideals are obviously the correct ones. (They are, but if most voters don't see it that way, it doesn't matter much, does it?)

Sadly, that's not the NPP we got, and it's unclear that such a consensus will arise from elsewhere. The idealists "won", if by "won" we mean "blew up the party so now it's just Huang And Friends". I don't see a party built that much around one not-terribly-likable personality, which keeps taking hard turns into unrealistic idealism, lasting particularly long. Personality-parties rarely outlast their key figurehead, and overly idealistic ones are likely to perish even sooner.

What have we got, then? A hobbled, bleeding NPP, a few scattered parties that occasionally work together, and a couple of popular legislators who are now independent.

I've said before that the question of whether the NPP would lose relevance if it takes an overly-pragmatic route of becoming a 'little green' by supporting Tsai and the DPP is a moot one: moving away from supporting the DPP at key junctures, turning instead towards more radical platforms, would render it a fringe party, and that's just another kind of irrelevance.

It looks, then, like they're gunning for irrelevance.