Taiwan's 'post-election stress syndrome'

[bemildred]

A useful explanation of Taiwanese politics. Sounds a bit
like things here in the USA, too.

TAIPEI - After Taiwan's presidential election in March, doctors noticed an unusual 10% increase in the number of patients diagnosed with depression or anxiety. And traumatized voters again will go to the polls on December 11 to choose an entirely new legislature. The stakes are high: the viability of government, the survival of political parties and relations with China.

This increase in anxiety or depression was noted at the end of a March presidential campaign of unparalleled bitterness - for Taiwan, at least - culminating in an assassination attempt on the president, the victory of the ruling party by just 30,000 votes out of 13 million cast, and then days of demonstrations, boiling over into riots when the losing camp refused to concede defeat.

The doctors named the malaise "post-election stress syndrome" and concluded that sufferers were in the grip of an "adjustment disorder" ie, mental distress caused by a disruption in one's view of reality.

The source of this disruption for the defeated opposition "pan-blue alliance" of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) was obvious enough. Having controlled Taiwan for 50 years, and having only lost the presidential election in 2000 because of internal rivalry, which led to a split ticket, the reunited standard bearers of the Chinese Nationalist cause simply could not believe that it was possible for them to lose power. Their entire strategy both domestically and in their relationship with China, had been based on the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government of President Chen Shui-bian being a one-hit wonder, a four-year interregnum, before the pan-blues (so named after the color of the KMT emblem) reasserted control over what they had come to see as their birthright. Fed by conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen, they entered a realm of denial from which they have yet to emerge.

Asia Times