Two days ago, the Taiwan High Court announced that the pan-blue camp had failed in their lawsuit challenging the validity of the March 20 presidential election. This is not the end of the issue, but rather the beginning of the final chapter.
The pan-blue camp had expected to lose its case, and in a press conference the day before the announcement, it had already set about limiting the damage. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
Naturally, Lien and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
During the US presidential election in 2000, the US could have degenerated into the endless struggle that we now see in Taiwan. But Al Gore, even though he held a majority of the popular vote, conceded the election to avoid a constitutional crisis. This is the behavior of a statesman who has both political insight and an understanding of the law. This action avoided the catastrophe of a US president being put in power by judicial decision without opposition support.
Four years later, Senator John Kerry conceded defeat to avoid dividing the nation. In conceding defeat before the complete count of votes in Ohio, Kerry was putting the national interest first and showing that he was a true statesman. He also showed that what is important in democracy is not only the system, but the understanding and faith of political leaders in the democracy and the laws of the nation.
In Taiwan, the scope of the struggle over the election has expanded. As the parties that lost the election are unwilling to concede defeat, and have taken the issue to the courts and to the streets, Taiwan has achieved little of political importance since March. In the process, time and community resources have been squandered.
If we compare our elections with those in the US, we can see that America's democratic culture is significantly more mature than ours. We have not had America's luck, for we only have a Lien, rather than a Gore. Lien does not see things in terms of competition, but only as a battle to the death. The battle has been going on for a year now, and the defeat in the High Court is a skirmish before the fight for votes in next month's legislative elections. Only when one party falls on its sword will the battlefield be cleared. This is the nation's misfortune.
The High Court's judgment on the validity of the March 20 election is the first domino to fall in this drawn-out electoral race, but it is not hard to see that the chances of winning future verdicts in this case are minimal. As for the legal proceedings associated with the March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute (三一九槍擊事件真調會條例), even a layman can see that numerous articles in the statute are unconstitutional. The pan-blue camp knows this, but proceeds regardless. As a result, it is now in danger of destroying the hopes of its parties in next month's legislative elections. If Lien and Soong were far-sighted statesmen, they would know that it was time to stop -- rather than make their own political parties and the whole nation the sacrificial victims of their self-destruction.
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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