The poll released yesterday, and cited by Taipei City Councilor and legislative candidate Lin Chin-chang (
But the more interesting thing about the poll was what it might tell us about the topic of localization. In terms of which party "loves Taiwan," the DPP beat the KMT by a 2:1 ratio. Just as interesting, a very large number of respondents said they believed the reason the DPP was able to obtain power so soon after its creation was because of its Taiwan-centered consciousness.
Lin has taken the results of the poll to mean that people reject the idea of "one China," and he advises the KMT to drop its commitment to this ideal or else face catastrophe at the polls. But "one China" is a symptom of the KMT's malaise, not its cause. The real locus of the KMT's problems is in the leadership's refusal to face facts.
The election result in March should have been a wake-up call. In 2000 Lien Chan (
The last thing the KMT needs, if it is to become centrist and mainstream again, is a merger with the PFP. Yet this is exactly what Lien has been working on.
You might think that the election results since 1996 show the popularity of the "Lee Teng-hui line" and the likely success at the polls of whoever can assume the mantle of heir to the pragmatic pro-Taiwan centrism that was Lee's hallmark. Yet James Soong said that he would not merge with the KMT as long as it still retained what he called "the stink of Lee Teng-hui." We can only interpret this as ideology blinding common sense.
If the KMT wants to see power again, it has to become what Lee tried to make it (and let us note here that the centrist Lee, who kept stealing the DPP's popular policies in the 90s, was something different from the fulminating anti-China zealot he has latterly become).
Younger KMT members surely realize this. Lin is not the first among the younger generation in the party to talk of a radical makeover. Ever since the pan-blue ticket's election defeat, there has been talk in the party of adopting a more vigorous pro-Taiwan stance, dropping the "commitment" to unification and even changing the name to the Taiwan Nationalist Party.
But such voices are simply not heard, and the party is moving in exactly the opposite direction.
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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