Mrs Mei and Mr Ban-fa

I'm sure Taiwan watchers will all remember the two cartoon characters that the GIO brought out to encourage people to support ECFA - Mr. Ec (一哥) and Ms. Fa (發嫂). They were rightly hounded at the time for their crude and patronising ethnic stereotypes of Taiwanese. Well after a recent series of conversations with a Taiwanese couple, I came up with the idea of two new characters- Mrs Mei and Mr Ban-Fa (apologies, I can't draw very well):

EVA and I spent one evening chatting with Mrs Mei and Mr Ban-fa. After EVA had explained that she was running in the Taipei City Council elections on November 27th she was 'assaulted' by a barrage of negativity from Mr Ban-fa who came up with all the expected reasons why EVA had simply lost her mind:

• You have no chance of winning, why try?
• Your party is too small and you have no money.
• Even if you win, what can you change by yourself?
• You're too young, no-one will vote for you.
• Politics in Taiwan is dirty and will never change.
• What guanxi do you have?

And on it went. To her eternal credit, EVA saw this as an opportunity to practice her skills of dealing with a passive, misinformed and fatalistic electorate and spent the time honing her replies, all the while aware that to be too clear, logical, rational would upset our guests and lose them face since they couldn't possibly be wrong.

I also had a conversation with Mrs Mei on inspecting the amazing speed at which Taichung roads are being repaired just in time for the election. Her basic argument was that to vote DPP in the Taichung Mayor elections (even though she was a 'light green' herself), was a wasted vote since 'they won't win anyway'. Then she pulled the A-Bian card. 'He let us down'. 'He didn't do his job'. So I told her that actually, aside from the relatively petty theft (and yes it was petty compared to what gets taken by other politicians and businesspeople in Taiwan), A-Bian did an ok job - unemployment down, GDP up. Yes, he broke the law and should be punished but wasn't his trial politically motivated? This Mrs Mei agreed to but when I pointed out that much much more money was routinely embezzled by Lee, Soong and the Chiangs (not to mention US citizen Diane Lee), Mrs Mei said that was in the past and everyone knew that.

This is the scale of the task facing the DPP. Even though Chen is in prison, there are many middle voters who have bought the KMT talking points about him on face value and refuse to make comparisons with like cases. What about the businessmen who steal billions from their companies and flee to China? They're not the President, who is expected to behave differently in a political-economic-religious social system corrupt from the bottom to the top. Since that corruption helps everyone sooner or later, no-one really wants to rock the boat.

Finally, Mrs Mei explained that people voted for the KMT because of their disgust with Chen and the DPP. The poor saps only now realise the mistake they made but in response have adopted the ostrich pose as their country is gradually merged with the PRC. Its not their problem of course and nothing can be done about it. Mr Ban-fa even told me that he doesn't care about anything except his family - everything outside either doesn't exist or won't affect them. This is pragmatics taken to the extreme degree but this not uncommon in Taiwan. And what about President Ma's downgrading of Taiwanese national identity and sovereignty and the closed door ECFA stitch up?

Mei Ban-fa.