President Chen Shui-bian (
During the past four years, Chen often took such trips as an opportunity to promote "stopover diplomacy" by visiting major US cities to break through China's diplomatic blockade. But this time he has planned a relatively pragmatic trip that mainly focuses on Taiwan-Panama relations.
The diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Panama have been shaken as China has constantly tried to lure it to over recently. Therefore, the inauguration ceremony of Panamanian President-elect Martin Torrijos tomorrow is a diplomatic battlefield where the nation must fight.
This is also why Chen is visiting Panama instead of sending an envoy. His personal visit may have a significant impact on whether Taiwan-Panama relations can be improved.
Apart from the interaction between Taiwan's and Panama's leaders, the push for a free trade agreement between the two countries also serves as a key index to the friendship.
It has been a year since the nations signed a free trade agreement, and no clear progress has been made since then. Perhaps Chen can examine the situation personally and push for the free trade pact.
The free trade agreement was the first of its kind signed by Taiwan and an allied nation so it has a symbolic meaning, and is crucial to the nation's future global economic and trade arrangements. The government must cautiously push it forward.
Chen will give Belizian President Said Musa a ride when he flies to Belize on Sept. 2. This will be a new diplomatic move, showing that Taiwan and Belize are old friends not restricted by formalities. This arrangement will benefit the friendship of the two countries and their leaders.
During Chen's weeklong trip, there are only three days on which he will be able to sleep in a real bed, and his schedule is packed to the limit. This trip seeks to achieve routine diplomatic objectives of consolidating the nation's relationship with its allies.
Although the focus of this trip will not be on Chen's transit in the US, numerous members of the Senate and Congress have said they could pay their respects and overseas Chinese will come out to show their welcome.
Despite these gestures, it is a wise decision for Chen to keep a low profile and avoid political controversy while passing through the US during the campaign season.
Putting aside the hype of stopover diplomacy and returning to the realities of the diplomatic battlefield, the gatherings Chen will attend in Panama and the behind-the-scenes negotiations that accompany them are all ways of furthering the interaction of nations and winning diplomatic points through friendships with other heads of state.
Chen's trip to Panama is also a chance for the president to walk out from the shadow of the 319 shooting incident and confidently achieve diplomatic goals.
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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