But @user86 has already decided that will be the lens with which to look at the KMT/DPP parties, I agree with you that the parallel to Western standards of right/left don’t transpose very well.
But I think you will find a perspective is impossible to change no matter how you might try, Im sure @user86 will never shift from trying to fit KMT/DPP into that left/right paradigm.
I think the left-right political spectrum is universal enough. Nobody would mistake the DPP for being right-wing, for example.
Putting that aside, do you have an answer to the question?
In the FPTP voting system all you need is a divisive issue that can’t really be decided by an election for two parties to hijack the entire election. In the US and other countries that doesn’t have to worry about their sovereignty, that issue would usually be drawn on religious or capital/labor lines.
Since Taiwan doesn’t have that luxury, the line is instead drawn on national identity/national security lines. It has an effect of sidelining religious or capital/labor issues for all parties involved, and the parties would pay basically the same lip service for all those issues, until it seems taking one side might give them an advantage in an election cycle.
That’s why both the KMT and the DPP had taken sides on for and against gay rights, abolishing the death penalty and green energy in the past, and they will likely continue to flip flop on issues that seem to be what divide parties elsewhere, in the future.
I imagine the political scene in Ukraine post 2014 and prior to the 2022 invasion would probably be pretty similar to Taiwan’s current situation.
Sometimes some people just get tired of having the same old bums in power
In part because of some naughty DPP politicians, isn’t it?
Traffic is a mess and people are dying, birthrate is cratering, owning housing is unaffordable, rent and food are getting more expensive, the economy is slowing down, wage growth has been unequal and insufficient, they want people to use English, Jina, etc.
Not that these are easily solved issues or necessarily caused by the DPP, but can affect voter sentiment
Keep in mind also a key problem with democracy is most citizens are not particularly cerebral
Yeah a lot of people are just bored with the Blue/Green status quo. The parties have come to somewhat resemble each other outside of Cross-straits issues. Similar issues with nepotism, corruption, connections to organized crime, patronage networks etc.
You can argue one is worse than the other, but Taiwan is a very highly educated and wealthy society now, way more than earlier stages of democracy, people just want something better, or a significant portion do.
Whether TPP can provide that is another question, but the reasons for the general sense of malaise with the current status quo is obvious.
Also the core of both parties is old as fuck and rich as fuck.
Actually no. If you bothered to read my summary of it.
Out of the 8 cases, the harassing was done by 1 film director (薛朝輝), 2 reporters (one from UDN, and other is unclear), 2 were done by party workers, 1 didn’t provide any detail at all, and 1 wasn’t even done as a DPP member.
The closest thing that came to a DPP politician doing the harassment is probably the accusation against Tsai Mu-lin, who ran once but was never elected. He was accused of holding a woman’s hand without respecting the woman’s wishes.
The DPP’s failure was mostly in how they failed to respond to these accusations with enough urgency and support for the victims, especially when it came to the director and 2 reporters, who were repeated offenders.
But I guess creating the impression that it was committed by DPP politicians was the goal all along.
I skip a lot of this thread and that topic, because I can’t be bothered
Good thing I phrased it as a question!
Seems the headlines on that have been misleading
I value your opinion and I’m sure you’re following this closer than i am. But still, the DPP is pushing it now because it is a political risk for them, even if their politicians have not been naughty
Don’t get me wrong, the DPP was wrong in how it dealt with these reported cases, and it’s a consolation that out of those wrongs, this belated #metoo movement is finally making some positive progress in Tawian.
However, how the harassment issues lodged against all political parties, the NPP, TPP, and KMT were reported, only shows the worst part of the current information war being waged. In terms of the KMT and TPP, both have actual politicians involved in pretty concrete harassment accusations, and the official responses from those parties are comically outdated. Yet, you won’t know that because someone is flooding the social media and forums with false info and memes against the DPP.
Why not? They are definitely fiscally conservative, as are the KMT. They are not really less or more socially conservative than the KMT as well(see my previous post about KMT once being pro-Gay right and the DPP against). The deciding factor in Taiwan politics is China.
Ok, I will continue to not follow this closely, then 
Well… by Canadian and European standards I guess. For many in the US both the DPP and the KMT are probably far from their definition of fiscally conservative parties.
So both parties could either be moderate or right-leaning, based solely on your two descriptions above.
Based on other policies I’ve seen the DPP and KMT advocate, the DPP definitely seems moderate center-left to me, while KMT moderate center-right.
EDIT: First line of Wikipedia entry:
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is a… centre-left political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Has anyone ever considered that this may be the last election in Taiwan?
Yeah, but not on this thread
For example?
Many on the KMT and TPP side will say that’s just fear mongering. While that would probably true in most elections anywhere else, Xi’s flying hundreds of planes across the midline and sending naval ships to stalk US warships as far as the Aleutian Islands.
Sexual harassment/gender equality laws, housing assistance for low-income earners, pre-school assistance, recognition and naming laws for indigenous peoples, affirmative action in university admissions for indigenous peoples, the recent constitutional amendment for more protections for the disabled, assistance and incentives for the art community (at least here in KH), reorganization of the Ministry of Agriculture to pursue ways for more sustainable farming practices, etc.
A lot of these are similar to issues that center-left parties in the West have advocated for recently.
The KMT has been statist and Leninist in structure whereas the DPP has traditionally been more free market in structure. Tsai led the WTO accession file as a bureaucrat, which was a lot more trade liberalizing than any subsequent bilateral. Likewise, despite being the so-called party of human rights, they’ve often played lip service to it when in office, especially during A-bian’s time. Economically, the DPP is to the right of the KMT in many regards. Socially, I don’t think you could make such an assumption in either party.
Case in point. A right-wing party wouldn’t want anything to do with the WTO (or left-wing for that matter). That’s a moderate/centrist thing.
Which is usually a center-left or left-wing thing.
That’s just being a politician. I’m mostly looking at official party values here rather than personal integrity or hypocrisy of individual politicians.
Startling 
: Brian’s Report on Taiwan Human Rights - Legal / Human Rights - Forumosa
And from someone who was involved with Amnesty International!!!
