◎ Chi Ming
In 2024, then-legislator Shen Boyang was asked by Hong Kong people to follow the surveillance of Taiwanese credit reporting companies. The Beijing Inspection and Quarantine Examination confirmed that it was true. It has prosecuted four credit reporting companies and issued wanted notices for two Hong Kong people. (File photo)
The Beijing Inspection and Quarantine Bureau recently indicted four credit reporting agencies, confirming that legislator Shen Boyang was paid by Hong Kong people and commissioned by a credit reporting agency to monitor him around the clock with tiny pinholes outside his residence for a month. There is irrefutable evidence that foreign forces have outsourced "transnational repression" to Taiwan itself, threatening the democratic defense line. It is a bloody fact. However, what did Wang Hongwei, Xu Qiaoxin and other blue-camp politicians say back then? They raved about "directing and acting on their own" and "delusions of persecution", and even claimed that they were "harassing the police." Now that the lies have been exposed and the collective overturned, have these blue-camp politicians apologized? Do you dare to condemn the foreign gangsters behind it?
Shen Boyang was placed under surveillance, and people in the blue camp frequently ridiculed him. (File photo, compiled by reporter Lin Xinhan)
What's even more shameful is that the overturned cheek was still red and swollen, so the accomplices immediately picked up the next bucket of dirty water and continued to splash it. In order to suppress Shen Boyang in the election campaign, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan and his thugs turned the "harm reduction measures" that the international public health community has promoted for decades and even the Taipei City Government itself into "distributing drugs in the community" and "encouraging drug abuse." Clean needles and methadone replacement therapy are the public defense lines to stop the spread of AIDS and save addicts. When it comes to the mouth of the blue camp, they have become demonized political firewood. There is no reason why we should trample on the dignity of public health experts and use parents' fears to withdraw votes. The lower limit is so low.
Please read on...
From covering up overseas surveillance to labeling the public health profession, this style of slander, slander, and panic marketing is actually an election campaign routine that the Kuomintang is hard to shake off. Every time there is an election, if there is no governance vision, all that is left is a squid war script.
Looking back at the past, large-scale elections were full of misdeeds. In the 2012 presidential election, the "Yu Chang Case" was used to smear Tsai Ing-wen, and the special investigation team concluded the investigation after the election; four years later, the "Haoding Case" was used again to attack Weng Qihui, and after many years of trial, he was finally found not guilty; the last Taipei mayoral election was labeled as a fraud, and all 62 cases were investigated and found to be illegal. Recently, the Tzu Chi fraud case proved the Tsai administration's foresight. Every time there is an election, the opposition party does not talk about its vision, but always incites anxiety with divisive pictures. Afterwards, it is found that there is no wrongdoing but it never apologizes or takes responsibility.
The last mayoral election in Taipei was marked as a fraud in vaccine procurement, and all 62 cases investigated were found to be illegal. The picture shows Chen Shizhong, the last Taipei mayoral candidate. (File photo)
Now that the Bailihou election is approaching, the clichéd script is playing out again. Maliciously manipulating public health policies aimed at reducing the risk of infectious diseases into a breach of campus security not only tramples on the professionalism of front-line medical and social workers, but also fools Taipei citizens into using them as a voting machine.
Democratic politics requires rational policy dialectics, not unlimited witch-hunting and rumor-mongering. Are Taiwanese really so easy to deceive? How many times will the Kuomintang continue to use the old smear tactics? In the face of the shameless squid war, only by fighting back hard with votes on voting day and refusing to be blackmailed by fear can the election return to public rationality.
(The author is a teacher)
