Disregarding public protests that the March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute (
The committee is now ready to operate starting next Monday, raising fears that the nation may once again be torn by confrontation between the blue and green camps.
The statute absurdly specifies that the committee will have 17 members drawn from outside the legislature or other government agencies, based on the number of seats the political parties hold in the legislature. All members can instruct prosecutors to search and investigate whoever is suspected or accused of being involved in the shooting. Those who refuse to cooperate shall be given a fine of no less than NT$100,000, and can be fined repeatedly. If the court's final ruling is different from the committee's investigation results, the committee can request a retrial.
We all know that not even the minister of justice, the public prosecutor general, or even the president of the Judicial Yuan can tell prosecutors or judges how to carry out their investigations, prosecutions or trials. Yet this "special committee" not only enjoys the power to conduct judicial investigations, but also the investigatory powers that constitutionally belong to the government's administrative and monitoring agencies. The committee even has the power to interfere with judicial rulings.
Faced with this nonsensical law, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union are refusing to participate. As a result, all committee members belong to the pan-blue camp, such as Shih Chi-yang (
After the presidential election in March, the street demonstrations willfully and arbitrarily stirred up by the pan-blues caused public support to plummet for the pan-blue camp in general and the PFP in particular. Yet the pan-blue camp continues unperturbed, inciting demonstrations against the arms procurement budget with the excuse that they are looking after the public's hard-earned money. They say that the Truth Committee "is a reasonable mechanism that prevents the DPP from blocking the search for the truth." Do they really think that such far-fetched excuses will deceive the people?
According to reports, funds are already being raised to support prosecutors, other officials and members of the public who are unwilling to be co-opted into this "pan-blue investigation committee." The funds will be used to pay the fines for non-compliance to underline that this pan-blue organization is unconstitutional and absurd. That funds are already being raised for this purpose indicates broad dissatisfaction with the committee, and also highlights the necessity for confrontation between the green and the pan-blue camps.
The most bewildering aspect of the pan-blue camp's policies is that its opposition to the arms budget will weaken the nation's defensive capability, while its special commission threatens the judicial system and disrupts social order. China can only be delighted by these prospects, so the pan-blue camp seems to be less fighting for truth than seeking the nation's downfall.
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,
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
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
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