CHAPTER 2 TAIWAN’S CASE
2.4 T HE CSSTA AND THE S UNFLOWER MOVEMENT
2.4.2 The Sunflower movement
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2.4.2 The Sunflower movement
As the discussions progressed in the Legislative Yuan by the end of February 2014, it was clear that the public hearings suggested by KMT’s legislator Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠) were going to take place. After the hearings, that in March 11 -16 2014, the KMT tried to block the DPP to in another set of rounds of hearings to avoid the possible “boycott of freedom” the DPP planned to avoid CSSTA ratification. On March 16th, 2014 the situation evolve into a fight that would continue the following day, leading to a 30 seconds declaration of legislator Chang Ching-chung communicating that the CSSTA would pass to the Executive Yuan for final revision and approval. The announcement came although the Legislative Yuan or any other social party had not revised the agreement. The student activists following the developments gathered and decided to commence the civil disobedience by staging a sit-in outside the Legislative Yuan on March 18th, 2014. By 18:00 hours that day 500 students were already participating in the protests. By 21:00 hours under the command of Chen Wei-ting and Lin Fei-fan 200 students agreeing to occupy the building breached the blockade made by the police around the Legislative Yuan54. At 22:00 hours the two leaders would declare the occupation of the building that would last, as announced, until two things took place: 1) the president apologized for its secretive policies, and 2) further negotiations came from the side of the legislators and the president.
As the days progressed and more people gathered inside and outside the LY, the objectives evolve to have the following concrete form:
1) We demand that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) immediately void Legislator Chang Ching-chung's (張慶忠) announcement that the CSSTA has passed the committee stage.
2) President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should begin with us dialogue and negotiations over:
(a) The rejection of the CSSTA; and
54 On the following days in Hong Kong lawmaker and activists Leung Kwok-hung led a group of 30 people to Taipei’s representative office in Hong Kong to show his support. Other activists decided to fly to Taipei to join the sit-ins outside the Legislative Yuan. Other activists rose more than HK $3,000 in one day using Facebook, to also join the protests. This showed that several people in Hong Kong were paying attention and interested to participate in pro-democratic protests of Taiwan. (Wee & Tsang, 2014)
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(b) Pass the bill for monitoring cross-strait agreements, and a promise to refrain from negotiating such agreements in lieu of the bill. If our demands are not met by noon on Friday, March 21, our protest will continue and we will begin our next round of action." (Democracy at 4 am, 2014)
Interestingly, the main objectives pushed by the Black Island Youth Front that were followed by the alliance managed to accommodate each group’s individual message.
Looking at the three points demanded, the claims are in regards of increasing a transparent and democratic process, but it does not immediately imply any perspective for to their approach. As it appears in Figure 5, the statistic provided by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, shows the ideas the population held against the CSSTA just before the protest.
Figure 5. Why the general public opposes the CSSTA
Source: (Guilford, 2014)
This figure provides a clear picture of what were the main ideas worrying the general population over the CSSTA. Therefore, as previously stated, the goals pursued by the Black Island Youth Front (BIYF) were appealing to all because it did not give a perspective more weight than another, because the main focus was to raise awareness and reject the secretive ways the ratification was being handled. In terms of completely satisfying their objections the BIYF covered 54 percent of the population that was anxious about Taiwan transforming into a “new Hong Kong”, employment and job opportunities. Furthermore, it partially
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Mainland China, but it did not propose any objective to achieve a solution in this regard.The same can be argued in the case of people worried about housing and media.
Nevertheless, at this point the most critical of all the objectives for the alliance, which could provide the space for “subsequent agendas” (migration, housing, media, etc.) without them losing their respective importance, was to break into the governmental process. In this way, if successful, all the respective levels of the government (starting from the Legislative Yuan to the Executive Yuan) would have to provide the opportunity of dialogue in the frame of the CSSTA, which provided the opportunity of the discussion of other objectives.
Additionally, the occupation of the LY provided the movement with an unmatchable leverage in the eyes of the society. The strategy adopted by the two leaders Lin Fei-fan and Chen Wei-tin provoked to draw the attention of all the media and the rest of the population that was not aware of what was happening in Taipei. Along with the usage of social networks and ads in international newspapers, the voice of the movement would extend beyond Taiwanese borders55. Therefore, in its peak the estimation of supporters participating in the sit-ins inside and outside the LY were around 500,000 people (Chen &
Chen, 2014; Rowen, 2014).
The bold action of taking the building of the Legislative Yuan at the end provided the strength for the movement to acquire its goals. The repertoire of contention found in the Sunflower movement might not have shown a huge variety56 but the targets were achieved with the strategies needed, as it seems the movement understood the huge distance of power between the state and the movement. Moreover, probably if students did not have taken the LY building they would not have had the opportunity of making the government
55 In order to mobilize more constituents and appeal other people in the population the movement put in place a media campaign (dedicated to different sections of the society) that had different news blog and channel with live feed from the Legislative Yuan like the one called “Democracy at 4 am”. In addition, it was put in place a system of money collection to finance adds in the local national newspapers as well as international ones, like it was the case with the New York Times report. Thence, awareness about the movement, the objectives and instructing the population about the CSSTA became available in Mandarin and English. (Democracy at 4 am, 2014)
56 The Sunflower movement used a combination of sit-ins and hunger strikes at the beginning. Nevertheless, hunger strikes were abandoned once the LY building was taken. Instead, the new tactic in the repertoire was to use large aggrupation of students to storm government buildings. There was a second attempt to use this strategy on the Executive Yuan building without success because the police was now aware that this could happen. (Rowen, 2014)
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to change its stand on the subject. Following the pressure and threats of continuing the occupation the LY building, the government agreed to take a resolution in accordance to what was demanded. On April 2th, 2014, the Executive Yuan issued a proposition of a new bill to establish a supervisory mechanism consisting of four steps to follow by the Legislative Yuan and would also require the participation the population57. This bill was called Cabinet-sponsored Cross-Strait Agreement Supervisory Act (兩岸協議監督條例草 案) (Mainland Affairs Council Republic of China (Taiwan), 2014; Lin, 2015)
Finally, after 24 days of occupation, on April 10th 2014 the activist vacated the Legislative Yuan building (Cole, 2014). This final step came as a response to the agreement reached with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (KMT member), which would finally accept the demands of the movement stating on the public media that he would not hold any further inter-party negotiations on the CSSTA until the new overseeing legal mechanism was passed in the Legislative Yuan58. This statement provided the immediate victory of the movement. Nonetheless, the struggle would need to continue during the negotiations of the overseeing mechanism and when the consultation of the CSSTA will take place. Until the writing of this study the oversee mechanism has not been passed in the Legislative Yuan as negotiations keep ongoing. Therefore, the CSSTA discussions in the LY have been halted until the mechanism is in place. (Lin, 2015)
57 For further information please refer to the appendix to see the document.
58 Wang Jin-pyng’s promise to the movement came as an unpleasant surprise for President Ma, as it caught him out of guard that a party member would agree to this. Immediately Ma convened a meeting with KMT law members to see if there was the possibility to continue with the ratification process before the overseeing mechanism was in place.
Afterwards, President Ma would declare that both could take place simultaneously. Nevertheless, this would not take place. Moreover, on February 10th, 2015 the Taipei District Prosecutors Office indicted the leaders and other 118 participants of the Sunflower movement on the charges of agitating the public and attacking police officials. The legal battle continues but these legal measures had been interpreted as a purge from the EY rather than the authorities excercising their power (Lin, 2015)
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