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EDITORIAL: When all
else fails, let the shoes fly
It seems that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) cannot go anywhere without
encountering flying shoes and protest banners. There have been so many
shoe-throwing incidents that they are no longer news.
The shoe-throwers come from all walks of life — students, rights advocates,
pan-green and independence supporters, and housewives — and they were motivated
by a variety of reasons: from Ma’s role in the recent political strife, to the
merciless cases of land expropriation and Ma’s comments depicting cross-strait
relations as not being state-to-state or international in nature.
The practice was inspired by an incident in which an Iraqi journalist Muntadhar
al-Zaidi threw shoes at then-US president George W. Bush in Baghdad in 2008. It
has become an unpredictable and unstoppable wave, prompting Ma’s security to try
to intercept shoes with a dove-catching net.
This form of protest began in Taiwan in October last year, when some protesters
threw shoes and bags at Ma during a Human Rights Day ceremony. Protesters,
particularly university students, continued the salvos and vowed that they would
“shadow” the president everywhere he went.
That they did. There have been at least nine separate shoe-throwing incidents
since last month. Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) was also hit
in the head by a shoe thrown by student movement leader Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) over
his unpopular land expropriation policy.
Shoe-throwing has become so popular that protest organizers began collecting old
shoes and dubbed their protests “Let the shoes fly,” a reference to the 2009
Chinese movie Let the Bullets Fly.
These incidents, which do not look good on television, were obviously
embarrassments for Ma, who said shoe-throwing showed a “lack of democratic
manners.”
Ma was perhaps right on one thing. Throwing shoes at someone out of anger,
mistreatment or any reason is not polite.
Perhaps the ideas of these unmannerly protestors were not so far from the ideas
of al-Zaiki’s or German national Martin Jahnke, who threw shoes at former
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) in the UK in 2009.
These shoe-throwers felt they lacked other means of making their voices heard.
Ma should have felt fortunate that those protesters held shoes in their hands
rather than bricks, pistols or dynamite.
The incidents should also make Ma ask himself a number of questions: Why him?
Why do people resort to this “uncivilized” — as critics call it — form of
protest?
It is because of unpopular policies supported by the president and his
insensible remarks. It is because public opinion is not represented in the
legislature, where the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) controls the majority.
It because the public are left without any choice except throwing shoes to vent
their anger and make their voices heard after exhausting all other options to
attract the administration’s attention.
Ma seems to be unfazed by his recent — almost shocking — 9.2 percent approval
rating. After rejecting the proposal for a national affairs conference, after
ignoring numerous protests outside the Presidential Office Building on Ketagalan
Boulevard, the president is still trying to bury his head in the sand and tell
people that Taiwan is doing just fine and he will lead them to the promised
land, if they just mind their manners and accept his policies.
If that is the case, Ma probably needs to purchase more nets because he is going
to see a lot more shoes over the next two years. Or, the time may come when Ma
will be nostalgic about only having to dodge old shoes.
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