Taranto is a fairly large city in southern Italy.A Spartan colony, Taranto warred against Rome in 280 B.C., and Pyrrhus, the greatest general of his age, led his 25,000-strong army to beat the Romans.But he so suffered in winning the war that he achieved what was henceforth known as a Pyrrhic victory.Aside from the Pyrrhic victory, Taranto is known throughout the world for tarantism.It is a dancing mania or malady in late medieval Europe regarded as being caused by the bite of the tarantula, a species of large spiders indigenous to Taranto.People bitten by tarantulas started dancing wildly like mad men and women on and on.
Come election time, politicians in Taiwan, bitten by the egomaniac bug, begin dancing likewise to the tune of their Pied Piper.
With the nomination of candidates for the presidential and legislative elections set to be announced shortly, political tarantism is plaguing veteran as well as novice politicians, particularly those of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.Instead of dancing madly in the street, all of them choose to develop symptoms of election syndrome.They show the symptoms for everyone to see.
The first symptom these politicians show is obsession with self-publicity.There are no lengths to which they would not go to get more and better media exposure.Those with a large war chest can afford to buy newspaper ads and/or TV commercials.The powers that be resort to what is commonly known as displacement marketing – by passing their self-aggrandizing messages for important government policy decisions which the media simply cannot ignore – for canvassing voter support.Their poorer counterparts without that much power have to turn to gimmickry.
A couple of less well-financed DPP lawmakers launched a private exercise to test the security of Taiwan University right after a bloody campus shooting at Virginia Tech.They claimed they wanted to test the reaction of the school authorities in case terrorists attacked Taiwan’s most prestigious institution of higher learning.The legislators called up police, and of course media workers who had to cover and report the gimmick, to prevent the “disaster.”Running for reelection, the gimmicky couple did have the publicity they wanted, though they might lose some clear-thinking supporters.One of them offered a tongue-in-cheek apology, but the other was obviously well satisfied.
Another common symptom is amnesia of convenience.It’s a party canon that candidates shall speak no evil of fellow candidates.That canon is conveniently forgotten.Four presidential hopefuls of the ruling party, for instance, lashed out at each other so fiercely that their enticing pipe-blower President Chen Shui-bian had to call for a truce openly, while trying in private to prolong the infighting to consolidate his power after his constitutionally mandated retirement in less than a year.
Vice President Annette Lu had to gang up with Frank Hsieh and Yu Shyi-kun to attack Premier Su Tseng-change for “political vote-buying” by promising to finance local public works construction to the tune of NT$2.6 billion.Trong Chai, who is acting for Yu as chairman of the party, joined in the delivery of the broadside, while Hsieh was mysteriously exposed by a popular tabloid as a defendant-to-be in a political donation scandal involving him while he was mayor of Kaohsiung from 1998 to 2005.
Still another is paranoia.Candidates are suspecting each other of conspiracy to end their hard-earned political career.In the case of Frank Hsieh, however, it might not be just a complex about being persecuted.His spin doctor said the case was thoroughly investigated two years ago and the front-running presidential aspirant was absolved.Shih Mao-lin, minister of justice, was required to find out who leaks a classified “personal opinion” of the prosecutor in charge to the muck-raking weekly.Hsieh has a legitimate claim that someone was trying to get him, though he could not identify who that someone was.
So does Annette Lu, who charged her rivals with attempting to rig the party primaries, which were held yesterday.She urged public prosecutors to look into allegations that candidates for a new Legislative Yuan collected ID and DPP cards for non-members who were bused in droves to the polls to vote for them and her adversaries.According to one allegation, one vote in a closely contested primary cost as high as NT$5,000.
Election syndrome has equally infected the opposition parties.Suspecting a Kuomintang conspiracy to stop them from being returned to the legislature, People First Party lawmakers boycotted a steering committee meeting to help the DPP put a bill to disqualify Ma Ying-jeou as candidate for president on the agenda of a following plenary session.Ma is standing trial for corruption in connection with the misuse of his expense account, to which he was entitled as mayor of Taipei.He resigned as Kuomintang chairman on last February 13 when he was indicted.If convicted after the bill becomes law, he will be forbidden to run.
Both opposition parties are almost neurotically worried that the DPP will maneuver the Central Election Commission into calling referendums alongside the presidential and legislative elections to boost the odds for its victory.To preclude it, the Kuomintang and its ally PFP proposed a bill to reorganize that commission.They insist that the national budget bill for 2007, which should have been adopted by the end of last year, be not acted on until after their reorganization proposal is legislated.
It is only fair to say opposition politicians are less severely attacked by election syndrome.That is due mainly to their being in opposition.When their party was in power (the PFP was formed by those who bolted the Kuomintang that ruled Taiwan for 50 years until 2000), they did all but exactly as DPP politicians are doing now.
All this means Taiwan has a long way to go before its politicians learn to behave like their opposite numbers in mature democracies who conduct themselves a little more decently.
（本文刊載於96.05.07 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）