IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES for democracy, living through
a gorgeous, sunny Saturday, 13th of January, 2024 in Taiwan. The
Guardian’s Michelle Kuo wrote a piece titled “Taiwan’s Election Result
is a Triumph for Democracy – and a Thorn in Beijing’s Side” which I am excerpting
below:
“In a world gone mad, Taiwan’s story is indisputably,
heartbreakingly hopeful. According to the nonprofit Freedom House,
Taiwan is the sixth most free country in the world – above France and the US.
It has legalized same-sex marriage, making it a haven for queer people across
Asia. It boasts one of the highest rates of female participation in the
legislature. It has universal healthcare and affordable public transport.
“The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds
on to a vision of Taiwan that is genuinely multicultural and multilingual. This
is a giant thorn in Beijing’s side because Taiwan shows that democracy works.
One of the Chinese Communist Party’s central claims is that democracy is
incompatible with Chinese-speaking societies. But Taiwan’s very existence
undermines that claim.”
IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES for democracy, looking back on
that warm, humid, and partly cloudy Monday, 30th of May, 2016 in the
Philippines. Time Magazine’s Nash Jenkins wrote a piece titled Why
Did the Philippines Just Elect a Guy Who Jokes About Rape as Its President?
which I am excerpting below:
“[M]illions of voters in the Philippines went to the
polls to vote for their next President. The apparent winner, with nearly
two-fifths of the vote: Rodrigo Duterte, the 71-year-old populist mayor who
gained international attention with a string of gleeful gaffes. John Oliver
described him as the Trump of the East, but Duterte makes Trump sound
like a Sunday school teacher: in November, he called Pope Francis ‘a son of a
whore’; last month, he expressed disappointment at the fact that he did not get
to participate in the 1989 gang rape of a ‘beautiful’ Australian missionary.
He’s casually mentioned his penchant for Viagra.
“But to millions of Filipinos, Duterte’s appeal is
simple: he is, they believe, the sort of bombastic firebrand who can clean up a
crime-riddled nation and eradicate endemic corruption.
“The country, in other words, needs a quick and dirty
fix, and that is Duterte’s mandate.
“’If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do
just what I did as mayor,’ Duterte said at a campaign rally over the weekend.
‘All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you. I
have no patience. I have no middle ground, either you kill me or I will kill
you idiots.’”
IT WAS THE SPRING OF HOPE, looking ahead, for Taiwanese
people as “Taiwan’s story is indisputably, heartbreakingly hopeful” in the face
of China’s disinformation and fake news flooding Taiwan before the election. China
has branded then the DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te a “troublemaker”
for his pro-sovereignty stance. Taiwan’s AI Labs founder Ethan Tu told VOA
during an interview:
“[I]n this year’s election, short videos on YouTube and
Tiktok are playing very important roles… the content produced by these
YouTubers aligns with the narratives promoted by Chinese state media. These
YouTube channel owners will pretend to be neutral but when they talk about
things in the videos, they will mix in information that reflects the Chinese
government’s interests… often pro-China while demoting Japan and the U.S. They will
frame China as a peacemaker while characterizing the U.S. as dragging other
countries into wars.
“As probably one of the first teams around the world to use generative AI to detect efforts to manipulate information created by generative AI, we hope other international partners will be interested in contributing to the efforts of preventing authoritarian states from using generative AI to influence people around the world, creating an alliance among democratic countries.”
IT WAS THE WINTER OF DESPAIR, in retrospect, for
Filipino people as hundreds of coordinated fake accounts with links to China supportive
of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) flooded the Philippines. Violating the
platform’s policies on foreign interference, such fake accounts were taken down
later by Facebook which viewed them as coordinated inauthentic conduct on
behalf of a foreign entity.
Former Philippine foreign secretary Albert del Rosario
exposed in the Rappler report that senior Chinese officials had grandstanded about
their impact on the 2016 Philippine elections where PRRD won. Del Rosario said:
“On February 22, 2019, we received information from a
most reliable international entity that high officials from China are bragging
that they had been able to influence the 2016 Philippine elections so that
Duterte would be president.”
Rappler reported Del Rosario’s slamming of PRRD’s dismissal
of the arbitral award to “fit into a disturbing pattern of loyalty to a foreign
power.” As one headline bannered: “Duterte says PH arbitral win vs. China ‘just’
a piece of paper, thrash to be thrown away” (CNN Philippines)
PRRD, during one of his journeys to China, said then: “I
just simply love Xi Jinping. He understood, he understands my problem and he is
willing to help.” Del Rosario ripped PRRD’s coddling of Xi, who has symbolized
an “aggressor that is openly and illegally occupying land and waters that
belong to the Filipino people.”
“It is certainly disturbing to see our President – who should be looking after his own people – relying on a foreign leader for his security of tenure as President,” Del Rosario stressed.
NUANCES IN DEGREE OF COMPARISON
Let’s throw some light on the above momentous turns of
events which may unearth a bit of nuggets of wisdom.
In the 2024 Taiwan election, China pulled out all the
stops in thwarting presidential candidate Lai Chen-te, the “troublemaker,” but it fizzled
out.
In the 2016 Philippine election, China made the same
all-out effort in propping up presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte, the “appeaser,”
and it prevailed.
The common denominator that tweaked the above turns of
events: the last-minute stroke of “disunity” as shown in the following headlines:
Headline: “An Alliance of Taiwan’s Opposition Parties
Collapse. Here’s Why It Matters” (Time)
“The dramatic falling out marks the collapse of a
short-lived Beijing-friendly alliance that… many speculated may have been a threat
to… Lai Ching-te,” Time reported.
“Had a short-lived pact between the KMT and TPP not
spectacularly and embarrassingly blown up in November, then the election result
might have been different,” Time noted in another report.
The following sequence of local headlines in times
past spoke volumes of such a last-minute stroke of “disunity”:
Headline: “LP Torn Between Mar Roxas, Grace Poe”
(Inquirer)
Headline: “Roxas Should Give Way to Poe to Beat
Duterte” (CNN Philippines)
Headline: “Poe Refuses to Withdraw from Presidential
Race to Allow Roxas to Defeat Duterte” (Gulf News)
Had the stroke of “disunity” between Roxas and Poe avoided,
the election result might have been different.
While China failed in uniting the two pro-Beijing political
parties in the recent Taiwan election, did it play a part in Roxas-Poe’s
last-minute stroke of “disunity” that resulted in a win for Duterte, a
pro-Beijing president?
Rather than dealing with such a trifling question from the distant past, let’s delve into this pivotal point to ponder: Do you ever wonder how the depravity of “disunity,” last-minute or otherwise, can make or break a nation’s fate?
Head collage photos courtesy of Foreign Policy &
The Yale Review of International Studies
Video clips courtesy of YouTube
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