The opposition camp often jeers at President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), saying that he looks more like a presidential candidate than a president, given that he so frequently bases his decisions on considerations for the next election. However, this is really a matter of the pot calling the kettle black, since the opposition has long since started campaigning for the presidential election.
The kneeling act of PFP chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) during Taipei's mayoral election campaign stirred a great deal of conjecture. Observers have good reason to believe that Soong's act was meant to give the KMT some face and appease Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) -- whose popularity appears to be soaring -- in the hope that Ma might not compete against him for the top job in 2004.
Even though KMT-PFP cooperation has become the pan-blue camp's key note in the run-up to 2004, the question of who will run for president has caused much consternation in the KMT. The endless backroom maneuvers and rumors coming from the party's aristocrats now make for the most intriguing show in Taiwan's political arena.
First came former Kaohsiung mayor and ex-KMT legislator Wu Den-yih
Recently, KMT Legislator John Chang
It is no wonder that, during a speech last weekend, former president Lee Teng-hui
One after another, these middle-aged politicians have denied they have any presidential ambitions. We do not know whether these rumors were part of party chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) pre-emptive strategy for subduing potential rivals, or whether any KMT politicians of a younger generation are in fact quietly building the momentum for a presidential ticket.
The dark maneuvers in the KMT also remind one of what happened within the DPP in the run-up to the 2000 election. Former party chairman Hsu Hsin-liang
In his pursuit of the presidential dream, Hsu ran as an independent candidate and did not hesitate to team up with then New Party Legislator Josephine Chu (朱惠良), so as to seek the support of his erstwhile opponents in the New Party.
That the presidential ambitions of a politician could cause a DPP man -- one who had advocated Taiwan's independence for all those years -- to make such an about face overnight and make friends with the New Party, makes a big joke of all he had stood for.
This makes one wonder whether there is anything more worthy of pursuit in Taiwan's political arena than becoming president. Politicians motivated by their own personal ambitions instead of the people's welfare will be dumped by voters. The 2004 election will attest to that.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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