Students from National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University, Fu Jen Catholic University and other schools recently began to take part in the post-election protests led by the pan-blue camp. Claiming to be free of political bias, more than a dozen of these students began a sit-in and hunger strike last Friday at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.
The hunger strikers have made five proposals. First, they want President Chen Shui-bian (
The students, however, seem to have no idea of how the government works -- or much knowledge of recent political history. The president is in a position of power, but he is not all-powerful.
For example, take the students' appeal for a Cabinet made up of the party with a legislative majority. Such a significant change to the government system would require a fundamental revision of the Constitution. Such power lies in the hands of the legislature, not the president. Since it is the pan-blue camp that claims a legislative majority, the students should be making this demand to Lien and Soong, not Chen.
As for forming a coalition government, Chen attempted to do that in his first term. He appointed the KMT's Tang Fei (
The students appear to be, excuse the phrase, jumping the gun in their demand for a commission to investigate the March 19 shooting. World-renowned forensics expert Henry Lee (
As for their claims to be politically neutral, at least three of the students leading the hunger strike are members of either the KMT or the PFP. Some of them have said that they would withdraw from their parties right away to show their neutrality. But their actions have understandably raised suspicions about whether one or more political parties are behind the students' protest, and has damaged the credibility of the protesters.
The focus of the students' complaints is largely Chen, yet much of what they ask for is beyond the reach of his authority. Therefore, as they continue their hunger strike, one would hope they could come up with more feasible appeals and come clean about their personal political stances. Trying to hide their political connections does a great disservice to their ambitions. It is commendable that university students want to debate government structure and policy -- but they should not allow themselves to become pawns in political power struggles.
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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