President Chen Shui-bian's (
It was interesting that the major criticism of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Alex Tsai after the speech was that it was late in coming. Actually, Chen said nothing Saturday night that the presidential office had not already offered before. A recount, international participation in the shooting investigation: these had been on the table as of midweek, but KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
That Lien and People First Party Chairman James Soong (
But this week has shown something far more upsetting to anyone who cares not just about democratic processes and the rule of law, but also about simple common sense. Everyone involved in this dispute knows how the balloting process in Taiwan is carried out. Everybody should therefore know quite well that it is a model of openness that other democracies would do well to imitate.
You cannot stuff ballot boxes in Taiwan. The bookkeeping about how many ballot papers are delivered to polling stations, how many are used and how many must be returned is simply too strict. You cannot fraudulently count the vote, since it is carried out in too open a style, and the registration of each ballot is liable to objection from party representatives if there is a hint of partisanship or skullduggery.
All parties involved in the election know this. All of the pan-greens, all of the pan-blues, everyone. You cannot rig a vote in Taiwan under the present system.
There is another thing that people should already know, unless their minds have been rotted by too many bad action films. You cannot "shoot to wound" a man in the stomach standing on a moving vehicle. And yet people believe these things.
Both these events have obvious explanations.
As to the election, Chen and the Democratic Progressive Party won it by a small number of votes. This happens: that is the way the system works.
And as to the shooting, some wacko, his mind turned crazy by the endless diet of pan-blue hate propaganda against Chen in the last few weeks -- the analogies with Hitler, bin Laden, Saddam and the like -- decided that Chen simply couldn't be allowed to win, and tried to kill him to prevent it.
This makes absolute perfect sense. It is a model of events that we can all understand. That does not mean that it is exactly what happened, but it is the most likely chain of events and should do as a working hypothesis for most people, until other evidence comes along. But not for the pan-blues.
What is disturbing about this is not that an election can be challenged: that is a legal right. Nor that losing an election is frustrating: that is human nature.
What is truly disturbing is the way that common sense has simply been thrown aside. Sane and rational people have been willing to overlook the obvious and believe the most preposterous things, rather than face the truth. A large number of people in this country are in the grip of hysterical self-delusion.
Perhaps Taiwan needs psychiatric help.
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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