Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Screenshot
A RECENT APPEARANCE on the online channel “Neutrality Studies” by former KMT legislator Joanna Lei proves a typical example of pan-Blue disinformation. Lei served as legislator from 2005 to 2008, before joining the New Party but failing to win reelection.
Lei later became leader of the anti-gay Faith and Hope in 2015. In 2017, Lei stated that legalization of gay marriage would “destroy marriage as we know it. Some places are waiting for Taiwan to set the example. If Taiwan falls, then the rest of Asia will fall.”
Lei focuses primarily on the KMT rally against DPP “Green Communism” on April 26th in her comments, claiming that the rally was not covered by western media biased toward the KMT. Lei lashes out at CNN correspondent Will Ripley in particular, claiming that Ripley is influenced by his time spent in Taiwan and hopes to always frame Taiwan in a positive light compared to China, though unusually she claims that the Taipei Times has some stringers that she trusts and who are credible reporters.
Lei claims that the rally was indeed 250,000 people, including many young people. This was indeed the crowd count claimed by the KMT, though this size does not seem to correspond to images put out by the party.
Lei spends most of the program railing against the current recalls facing DPP legislators. While acknowledging that some government systems have provisions for snap elections that Taiwan does not and this is why there has been a series of recall campaigns, Lai claims that the recalls are DPP orchestrated as a means of deteriorating democratic institutions. Lei conveniently ignores that the right to recall is one enshrined in the constitution and that the recalls are not DPP orchestrated, but by civic groups that maintain independence from the DPP, even if the DPP evidently does support the recalls.
Still, in line with this conspiratorial worldview, Lei claims that the Lai Ching-te administration is authoritarian. Lei points to the questioning of recall organizers who are accused of copying the KMT’s party rolls rather than collecting signatures to claim this, as well as the arrest of Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je on corruption charges. In this, Lei conveniently ignores that a number of the charges against Ko originated from a member of her own party, Taipei city councilor Chung Hsiao-ping, as well as that her own political party has repeatedly called for the arrest of DPP politicians in the past.
The KMT was, after all, formerly an authoritarian party. And those questioned or arrested today are hardly held incommunicado, shipped to prison camps such as Green Island, or executed such as occurred during the KMT-orchestrated White Terror.
Lei primarily frames contention between the DPP and KMT as about the KMT’s cuts to the budget. Lei downplays the scale of the budget cuts–the largest in Taiwanese history–while claiming that the KMT does care for Taiwan’s defense, only freezing the budget for the domestic submarine project as a means of accountability. Lei conveniently leaves out that KMT legislator Ma Wen-chun is accused of leaking confidential details of Taiwan’s domestic submarine program to China. Lei also conveniently fails to mention that the KMT has frozen Taiwan’s Constitutional Court and previously sought to claim investigatory powers from the executive and judiciary to the legislature, in claiming that the budget is a form of executive overreach–budgeting powers belong to the executive branch of government, per Taiwan’s constitutional set-up.
Other claims by Lei prove puzzling. Lei attacks Lai over ties to the US, claiming that the US will throw Taiwan under the bus, and that the Trump administration’s tariff shocks are one example. Lei specifically takes issue with US military advisers being present in Taiwan, claiming that Lai has allowed foreigners to work in the government. Lei further accuses Lai of being loyal to the Japanese empire, claiming that there are two strands of Taiwanese independence–the pro-American strand and the pro-Japanese strand. It is not clear where Lei got this belief from.
For the most part, host Pascal Lottaz simply agrees with anything Lei says, while also lashing out at western media’s failure to be attentive to the KMT. But Lottaz’s stances are self-apparent, in that he routinely cites Ukraine as having provoked Russia by becoming too close to NATO. At another point in the program, he claims that Germany is targeting the neo-Nazi party of the AFD as a form of political persecution and suggests that similar may be occurring in Taiwan. It may be of little surprise that he would see common cause with Lei, given such far-right sympathies, then.
If anything, Lei’s comments are indicative of the state of the KMT at present. Conspiratorial thinking is par for the course in the pan-Blue camp today.