For the sake of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance, some people within the camp should come up with the guts to tell KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) that their latest demand -- that a new election be held -- will likely work against them.
The pan-blue's offbeat performance after the election has not only provoked the resentment of the 50 percent of voters who voted for President Chen Shui-bian (
During this past week, two surveys conducted by pro-pan-blue Chinese-language newspapers released on Monday and yesterday indicated that the majority of the general public disagrees with the massive protest going on in front the Presidential Office. The poll released on Monday cited a figure of 65 percent, and yesterday's poll 59 percent.
Also, by Wednesday, virtually all major news media, including those that are pro-blue, began to urge the alliance leaders to accept the proposal offered by Chen to amend the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Law (
The pan-blues have nothing to blame for this but their own ridiculous handling of their defeat. While their sense of disappointment and anger from losing on such a narrow margin -- 0.228 percent -- is understandable, their handling of the situation is not. Leaving aside the issue of the inherent danger in inciting tens of thousands of highly-volatile supporters to take to the streets in protest, the way that the pan-blues have repeatedly escalated and shifted their demands not only tries the patience of everyone, but reveals a very fundamental problem within the camp -- the absence of crisis-management and decision-making abilities.
On the evening of his election defeat, Lien stated that he wanted to file a "a lawsuit overturning the election result." That, of course, was entirely within his right, and very likely he will eventually be entitled to a judicial recount of the votes. However, once all the ballot boxes were sealed by the courts 12 hours after his speech, the pan-blues changed their mind and began to ask for an immediate administrative recount, because such a lawsuit could take months.
That was an impossible demand, since the law does not provide for administrative recounts. But when Chen agreed to amend the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Law to have an administrative recount by next Tuesday, the pan-blues then refused the offer and also refused to review a bill that they themselves had submitted to the Legislative Yuan for that purpose earlier. Instead, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Then on Wednesday, sensing that a recount would be unlikely to overturn the election result, Lien and his supporters began to talk about holding a new election which is only possible if a verdict is entered, finding the past election to be illegal. This means that Lien and Soong will have to go back to square one -- filing lawsuits and seeking judicial relief.
So, can somebody from the pan-blue camp please explain to the rest of us what was the purpose of all the charades over this past week?
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
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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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