Government officials and members of the press accompanied President Chen Shui-bian (
The nation has been conducting the Han Kuang annual military exercises since the middle of this month. Many of the exercises occur every year and are little noted. By contrast, attention-grabbing drills such as the simulated emergency jet landings on the highways -- the first of their kind in over 20 years -- have captured the public's imagination and been widely reported in the press. This latest exercise, with the president going out to sea on board a submarine, is one such attention-grabbing event.
These novel exercises have sparked a public discussion on national security. This offers the country another opportunity to debate the need for military purchases. It also offers a chance to discuss the multi-billion dollar military-purchase budget, which is stalled in the legislature as a result of the stand-off between the governing and opposition parties.
The strategic thinking of the nation's military is focused on keeping a decisive battle in the Strait. Far from being an aimless waste of funds, the purchase of anti-missile and anti-submarine arms and equipment therefore fills a crucial need. Currently, a scarcity of funds and the government's inability to persuade the opposition parties and the general public are preventing passage of this critical budget appropriation.
Under Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule, big military purchases resembled black holes. It was hard for the public to know what was going on. Even in the government, only a few people had a full grasp of the situation. Because of this lack of transparency, national funds were mixed up with private funds, and huge amounts of taxpayers' hard-earned money found their way into the pockets of vested interests.
What's more, the military-purchase budget has become a tool in the development of a pragmatic diplomacy. The government is exchanging arms purchases for international visits by top level officials and the development of diplomatic space.
The stalling economy has also meant that the government's tax income is falling precisely when military expenditures should be increased. This has led to public concern that spending on social welfare and infrastructure development will be curtailed.
To win approval for its multi-billion dollar budget allocation, Chen has gotten personally involved. He emphasized that both the government and the opposition should work together to approve this budgetary allocation. To help achieve this, Chen has even taken a ride in a submarine, a clear indication of the urgency with which the government views this issue.
National security should not be sacrificed to the standoff between the pan-blue and pan-green camps. Neither should the government view all the criticisms made by the opposition as malign obstructionism. We hope that the government will work hard to win public support for this NT$610 billion (US$18.2 billion) budgetary allocation for the military by addressing concerns of where the money will come from, its impact on other spending and the transparency of the purchasing process.
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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