We are thinking of running the following classified ad: "Missing: two policy platforms, one blue one green, last seen ...". That's the problem, because it's been so long since there's been any serious policy debate that we can't remember when it was last seen.
We are well aware that President Chen Shui-bian (
You have to go back a month to hear the kind of policy pledge familiar in legislative elections elsewhere -- implementation of a senior citizens' pension plan. All the rest is fluff; rousing fluff for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) faithful, but fluff all the same. Because while this newspaper agrees with and has long advocated most of what Chen has proposed, we also note that these are mostly symbolic issues. They have a lot to do with national identity, but have little to do with the day-to-day business of making Taiwan a better place to live.
Elsewhere in this newspaper, we report on the frustration felt by both environmental and women's groups. Issues close to their heart are not being addressed, and we share that frustration. Taiwan has one of the most degraded environments of any newly industrialized country, thanks to the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) shortsightedness. What can be done to rectify this? Gender equality in the workplace, too, is still far from being a reality here, despite numerous laws mandating it. There's been no talk of solving Taiwan's dire fiscal problems, no mention of industrial hollowing out, no discussion of the possibility that the "Taiwan model" of economic growth is exhausted and urgently needs a rethink.
Compared with the pan-blues, however, the DPP look like policy wonks. The only thing we have heard at any time from the blues is that a blue majority is needed in the legislature to prevent the greens from doing anything. Perhaps that is not exactly what they say, but it is certainly what their message means: "Elect us so we can prevent Chen's hotheads from getting anything done." Of course we know the blues have more pressing concerns than policy, such as how to cope with KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (
So the election campaign runs on, in a total vacuum of real policies. Perhaps that is simply because there is a broad consensus on the way the big things -- the economy, for example -- should be handled, so that all that is left to quibble about is the symbols.
There's certainly room for debate. Does Taiwan want a small government, low-tax, low-benefit kind of society, as it traditionally has had? Or does it want a high-tax, high-benefit, European-style welfare state? This cleavage is not reflected in the two camps at the moment, and more's the pity. Perhaps we simply have to wait for the defeated KMT to reinvent itself before the body politic becomes more sensible. Hopefully that day will not be too long delayed.
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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