President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is being sworn in today to his second term as president. Today also marks the fourth anniversary of the end of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) one-party dictatorship.
Following this year's presidential election, despite some unrest, society managed to maintain order, with people of every walk of life going about their business and the economy gradually recovering.
China still continues its suppression of Taiwan. A few days ago, Beijing issued a threatening statement accusing Chen of moving toward independence by planning to draft a new constitution.
The US, however, showed its commitment to cross-strait security by sending the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to patrol the waters off the Philippines and by warning China not to make any reckless moves.
Taiwan is thankful for what the US has done. Although Taiwan-US relations were put to the test during the presidential election due to Chen's insistence on holding a referendum, the friendship between the two countries will endure, in view of shared democratic values and the firm support the US has offered over the years. Taiwan cherishes this friendship and looks forward to more solid relations.
It is to be hoped that people from both the ruling and opposition parties will offer a loyal critique of Chen's performance during his second term, and uphold stricter standards.
Chen did not win an outright majority of the vote in the 2000 election -- and the opposition remained in control of the legislature -- so Chen constantly ran into obstructionism on the part of the opposition parties. Things were made worse by the fact that Chen was a new hand at governing the nation and that he had to overcome the burdens of decades of KMT "black gold" policies.
However, this time Chen won the support of a majority of voters, making this victory more important than the one four years ago. He now has four years' experience and his government is no longer a new government. He is thus responsible for the success or failure of his policies.
This newspaper, as a public institution, will therefore act as a social conscience, and not only encourage Chen but also criticize him when appropriate.
In a two-party democracy, the ruling party and the opposition are both bound by responsibilities: The ruling party cannot be arrogant and the opposition cannot avoid responsibility because it's in the minority.
These duties are inescapable, which means that in the event of a national or social crisis, the ruling party is duty-bound to eliminate the crisis. Opposition parties cannot escape responsibility for cooperating with the government to solve a crisis simply because they are not in a ruling position. This is the true sense of mature party politics.
Unfortunately, in the ethnic confrontation triggered by differing opinions about national identity, the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) have been unwilling to bear their responsibilities. They created conflict following the election, trying to push the nation into long-term turmoil to gain political benefit.
The opposition camp has long served as a tool of China, echoing Beijing's stance on the cross-strait issue. The KMT's pro-localization faction has called for party reforms, and many have suggested that the word "Chinese" be eliminated from the party's name. However, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
The KMT's Central Standing Committee yesterday passed a proposal for a merger with the PFP. According to the plan, the party's name will remain the "Chinese Nationalist Party" after the merger. Party reform is absent from the plan -- one sees only Lien and PFP Chairman James Soong (
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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