Honoring Peng's manifesto
In 1964, Peng Ming-min (
Over the past 40 years, this manifesto has provided the guiding principles in the struggle for an independent, fully free, sovereign and democratic Taiwan for Taiwanese all over the world.
When we reread this manifesto on its 40th anniversary today, we can see that the nation's politics and social systems have been evolving along the path laid out in this document. Some examples of this evolution are the abolition of martial law, the removal of bans on forming political parties, the removal of censorship and bans on publishing newspapers, the reelection of the national legislatures and the establishment of a popular election for the head of state. All of these things represent implementations of the manifesto's guiding principles.
Some of the goals that remain to be accomplished are rewriting the Constitution to guarantee basic human rights, achieving true democracy by establishing an effective administration responsible to the people, unifying the country's population regardless of a person's place of origin and establishing a new country with a new government in order to participate in the UN as a new member -- and to strive together with other nations for world peace. Fortunately, we have begun to achieve these remaining goals.
The Taiwanese are pleased that former president Lee Tung-hui (
The commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Manifesto of Taiwanese Self-Salvation recognizes and honors Peng's lifelong devotion to Taiwan. It also provides a time for us to review and to rethink our history. The commemoration should inspire us to redouble our efforts to speed, deepen and strengthen our democracy. We are reminded to hope that the remaining goals of the manifesto will be accomplished soon.
Thomas Chen
New York
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,
RSS