One day after his nomination as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate, President Chen Shui-bian (
One important reason that Lu was chosen, despite doubts in the party and outside it about her ability to draw voters who are not traditional DPP supporters, is the rising popular support for Chen in the opinion polls.
Various polls show Chen catching up or even gaining a lead. Even the campaign headquarters of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
Under the circumstances, Chen obviously feels much more confident about not relying on his running mate to win brownie points from the voters. While choosing a new partner may bring in new votes, it also comes with risks associated with the unpredictability of a new partnership.
Moreover, while Lu may have been a somewhat controversial figure in the past, she has made a tremendous effort in the past year to change her style. Her level of cooperation with and strong sense of loyalty to Chen have convinced the president to keep her as his running mate for the sake of stability and harmony within the party.
With the return of most of the old faces from the last election, except for New Party presidential nominee Li Ao (李敖) and vice presidential nominee Elmer Feng (馮滬祥) -- whose absence surely pleases most sane people in Taiwan -- the 2004 presidential election is looking more and more like a class reunion.
However, things are different in many ways. First, Lien and Soong, who in the last election ran respectively as KMT and independent candidates, have joined forces this time. They hope that by teaming up, they will win all the votes garnered by each in the last election, which would essentially guarantee the pan-blue camp an election win.
Unfortunately for the pan-blue camp, things might not work out that way. Many voters will, as they should, examine the performance of Lien and Soong, as well as their parties' performance, over the past four years.
In terms of their performance, Lien and Soong do not have much to brag about. For one thing, the KMT's ill-gotten party assets, which were a major issue in the last election, remain an unresolved issue. Moreover, the voters can see for themselves how the pan-blue camp has abused its legislative majority to block the policy initiatives of the Chen government. The pan-blue camp is having a tough time learning to be the opposition.
Even more important is the uncertainty people feel about how the government would be run if Lien and Soong were elected. After all, Taiwan has never had a president and vice president who belonged to different parties. With the KMT and PFP having trouble working together in the presidential campaign, it is hard to imagine how things would work out if they were elected.
In contrast, Chen and Lu offer comparative stability and predictability -- issues of importance to the moderate voters who will probably decide the election. Moreover, it is not hard to see that the DPP has shown much more progress in learning how to be a ruling party than the KMT and PFP have shown in learning how to be the opposition.
Under the circumstances, the only thing that is certain is that the election will be very tight.
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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