It is difficult to think that many people believed the pan-blue camp had a realistic chance of overturning the result of the presidential election with its ridiculous lawsuit. After a long, seven-month wait, the Taiwan High Court has handed down its verdict, rejecting the claims of the pan-blue camp that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) were elected illegally.
Ironically, across the Pacific, and only hours before this verdict was released, US Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry called incumbent President George W. Bush to concede defeat after an extremely close presidential race -- at the time there were 254 Electoral Votes to Bush and 252 to Kerry with Kerry trailing Bush in Ohio by a very narrow margin. For a moment, there were fears there would be a repeat of the fiasco four year ago, when Bush was effectively declared president by the Supreme Court. But Kerry had the decency to uphold the integrity of an admittedly flawed electoral system.
It is important to keep in mind that this US presidential election -- owing to a controversial war against Iraq and issues such as tax reform and gay marriage -- divided Americans in a manner no less painful than Taiwan's experience at our presidential election in March. But the American people and the presidential candidates kept their cool at the most crucial of moments and democracy prevailed.
This serves as a painful reminder of the night more than seven months ago when, immediately after the vote for the presidential race was announced, Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman and presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰) and his running mate, People's First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), not only refused to concede defeat but also accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of cheating and tampering with ballots, before filing an unprecedented lawsuit to overturn the result -- without substantial evidence to back their accusations. When asked about the resemblance between the situations faced by Kerry and Lien, Soong said yesterday that "so long as the truth is not out, there can be no mutual trust in society and there will always be polarization."
The problem with the pan-blue camp is that it is so blinded by its biases that "truth" has no value. But the truth of the matter is plain and simple -- they lost. The inability of the pan-blue camp to face up to this difficult reality took on greater meaning when, before the verdict had even been handed down, Lien said that Chen was a fraud and that aggrieved people were entitled to kill him. Other KMT members also accused the court of being unfair -- even though the court had said nothing! With this kind of behavior on show, it was already clear the pan-blue camp was never going to accept the verdict of the court. An appeal is pending.
If the KMT wishes to waste more of its ill-gotten assets on financing this frivolous lawsuit, then that's its business. However, there is cause for concern as to how pan-blue supporters will react to this verdict. In view of the irrational behavior of many of these supporters, for which we have only the inflammatory language of pan-blue politicians to thank, it is a justifiable concern. At times like this, one can only entreat these supporters to respect the judiciary and basic democratic values and refrain from further destructive behavior.
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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