KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
The KMT thinks there is no better time than now to confirm a Lien-Soong ticket. After all, the party's victory in the Taipei mayoral election has boosted internal morale to levels not seen in years, while Soong's "kneeling act" during the campaign was widely criticized. The PFP's image has also been tarnished by some of its members' alleged involvement in the Kaohsiung City Council vote-buying scandal.
As part of this push to promote Lien as presidential material and force Soong to settle for second billing, the KMT has launched a campaign to resurrect the legacy of the late president Chiang Ching-kuo (
Lien has said he is optimistic about reaching an agreement over a joint ticket with Soong. To demonstrate his sincerity, he has ruled out the possibility running on a ticket with Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
But surely all of Lien's optimism and magnanimity must strike the PFP as completely phony. After all, in the last presidential election, not only did Lien lead a party that had dominated the country for more than 50 years straight into opposition, he trailed far behind Soong both in actual votes and in popular support.
Some recent opinion polls have indicated that either a Lien-Soong ticket or a Lien-Ma ticket would draw more support than Chen's re-election campaign. But the key word there is either Soong or Ma, not Lien. So the best path for the PFP is to postpone locking in the ticket until the last possible moment.
In addition, the PFP cannot help but feel nervous about the long-standing desire within the KMT to see the two parties merged. It has already rejected one merger offer made by Lien. After all, the KMT may talk about cooperation and mergers, but its party charter contains a clause designed to keep Soong from ever becoming a member again. Sincerity is not something that either party knows much about.
Then there is the niggling little detail that a joint ticket has not been approved by a democratic mechanism of either party. Neither the officials nor the members of either party have been given the chance to debate the idea. Closed-door discussions between the parties' top leaders have little to do with democratic politics. Soong may claim that KMT-PFP cooperation would not mean a return to the old days of autocratic rule. But given the blatant disregard both he and Lien apparently have for the popular will, their teaming up may herald such a comeback.
Political cooperation must be based on common values and ideals and a shared vision for the future, something a KMT-PFP link-up clearly lacks. Such a marriage of convenience is unlikely to last and should not be encouraged.
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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