Recently the PFP has specialized in holding press conferences and crying foul on behalf of its chairman. To clear PFP Chairman James Soong (
With so many fingers pointing at its controversial leader, the PFP in its paranoia is presenting a conspiracy theory, essentially claiming that everyone wants to harm Soong. But is Soong really as innocent as the PFP would like us to believe?
The Chung Hsing Bills Finance scandal is a four-year-old case. On Wednesday, in response to a question from a member of the public, President Chen Shui-bian (
After the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office decided not to indict Soong over the case, lawyer Chuang Po-lin (
The Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office has now ordered the Taipei prosecutors' office to look into the reasons cited by Chuang in his appeal. The pan-blue lawmakers' accusations of political persecution are an overreaction.
On another front, the Central News Agency (CNA) recently made a mistake in translating a news report about former French foreign minister Roland Dumas' remarks on the Lafayette scandal. Dumas claimed that US$400 million in kickbacks had been transferred to the "general secretariat" of the then-ruling party -- ie, the KMT. But CNA mistranslated the phrase "general secretariat" as "secretary general" -- and in so doing directly implicated Soong.
The fact that the report turns out to be a mistranslation in no way actually proves Soong's innocence. After all, he was the KMT secretary-general at the time, the man who oversaw the party's secretariat. If the Lafayette kickbacks have anything to do with the KMT's secretariat, they almost certainly have to do with Soong. Using a mistranslated news report to "prove" Soong's innocence is an attempt to divert public attention and put blinkers on people's eyes.
This is nothing new for Soong. A few days ago, Soong argued during a press conference that, as director-general of the Government Information Office at the time, his role in the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident was simply to try to maintain the nation's image. What an understatement. During the trials for those arrested in the notorious incident, Soong publicly denounced them as "pro-Taiwan independence elements," and "those who walk the same path as the Communist bandits," and as "People who want to overthrow the government by force."
Soong's words defined the incident then and betray him now.
There's a frequently used phrase in local politics -- borrowed from Shakespeare -- "The queen's chastity cannot be questioned!" Soong is not only the chairman of the PFP but also the "queen" whom KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
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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