These days, the electronic media in Taiwan seem to know only one topic: the campaign of veteran democracy advocate Shih Ming-teh aimed at bringing down President Chen, Shui-bian. For Chen’s opponents, this Saturday was the big day. At last, a huge rally or sit-in demonstration (as it has been dubbed by the organizers) kicked off in the center of Taipei. The protesters are ambitious and profess endurance: they are demanding the resignation of the duly elected Head of State and vow to continue their protests until Chen steps down - and be it, they add, until the end of his constitutional term in May 2008.

I spent parts of the afternoon mingling with the demonstrators, many of whom followed the organizers’ instructions and wore red T-shirts. Due to my physical appearance, I stick out in Asian crowds; as a result, two TV-teams approached me for an interview. From the reporters’ questions I quickly gathered their anti-Chen bias. They seemed disappointed when I didn’t provide Chen-bashing sound-bytes, but, instead, praised the peaceful character of the demonstration and the total absence of armed police or other security forces.

While Shih, Ming-teh, who I had personally met on my first visit to the island ten years ago, may be called the instigator of the protests, the opposition KMT is providing the warn bodies. To an outsider like me this is a strange, yes bizarre political alliance. President Chen, no doubt, has lost much of his appeal with the electorate. Even his party-mates at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) admit that his popularity has fallen to under twenty percent. Politically, I was told, his second term is a disappointment. What has aggravated the situation are the allegations of corruption in the First Family. Coming from the Philippines, I am impressed that a member of that very family has actually been put behind bars.

Often, I look at political situations in Asian countries in a comparative way. It strikes me that in more than one Asian democracy the elected leaders have become highly unpopular. Recently, a colleague from South Korea said that President Roh, Moo-hyun’s ratings have fallen to 15 percent. While Thai President Thaksin’s ratings may be better than that, he is also discredited in the eyes of many. And then there is Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who according to the pollsters is the most unpopular president since the introduction of polling in her country.

The unpopularity of elected leaders is a part of the democratic equation. Elections give the people the possibility to remedy the situation by voting the disliked leaders from office. In some countries - the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand are cases in point - the opposition is not willing to wait until election day and has initiated legal and other processes to bring down the unpopular leaders.

In all these countries, street protests have been applied as political instruments. As long as they are peaceful, demonstrations are a legitimate (and legal) instrument in a liberal democracy. In direct comparison, the mobilization of “the masses” I witnessed today in Taipei has been more impressive than the anti-GMA demonstrations I observed in the Philippines.

But don’t get me wrong: the 200 000 demonstrators in the streets of Taipei pose no threat to the president. They might be a noisy nuisance. But Taiwan is no where close to a replication of an EDSA II (when a huge crowd of demonstrators in Manila assisted by the military brought down a president who many Filipinos considered corrupt and incompetent), let alone an EDSA I that toppled a dictator.

For People Power “Philippine style” to happen, the military would have to take sides against the government. Nobody I talked to these days in Taipei considers this a realistic scenario.

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