Politically aware readers will have noticed what happened to the mayors of the nation's two special municipalities on Tuesday. In the morning, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) appointed Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) as premier and asked him to form a new Cabinet. In the afternoon, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was summoned by the Control Yuan for questioning in connection to the recent MRT escalator accidents and the incident of an abused girl who was turned away from several Taipei hospitals.
For 50 years, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) emphasized the north of Taiwan over the south and national resources were concentrated in the north. In the eyes of northerners, Kaohsiung has long been viewed as a city in the remote countryside, compared to cosmopolitan Taipei.
Because the nation's media outlets are concentrated in the capital, this situation has led to narrow-minded "north-centric" attitudes. The media's long standing focus on the city has given rise to the perception that Taipei is Taiwan. Taiwan outside of Taipei seems to be nonexistent, and the mayor of Taipei has naturally become a media darling. Every move he makes has become national news, while the political achievements of the Kaohsiung mayor has forever been designated as "regional news."
The Taipei mayor is better looking than many celebrities, and the media's love affair with him borders on the psychotic. Even when foreign media mention him, they characterize him as honest or "the very popular" Taipei Mayor Ma. Hsieh, however, who was elected the same year as Ma, seems to have been exiled to a place no one has heard about or shows any interest in. Lacking the media spotlight, his only support has been his popularity among Kaohsiung residents.
This has long been a cause of discontent for the residents of southern Taiwan. Fortunately, the Ai River speaks for itself. One of Hsieh's major administrative achievements has been to revitalize the Ai River, which used to be renowned for its filth and pollution. Now, the Ai River has been developed into a glittering cultural and commercial icon. It may be as a result of this achievement that the Taipei City Government has begun to refurbish the river bank areas of the Tamsui and Keelung rivers and set up tourist marinas in Tataocheng and Kuantu. Due to a lack of comprehensive planning, its efforts have not won much support from Taipei's residents. This situation goes to underline the fact that while the Taipei City Government has plenty of plans, it doesn't have the ability to see them through.
The fact that Hsieh has "come north" to form a Cabinet is a recognition of his achievements in administering the nation's main harbor city, and also an indication of the growing importance of southern Taiwan. Ability and public support are both important factors in politics, and the reason that Hsieh has been raised to his new position is due in no small part to strong grassroots support in the south. It is certainly not simply due to the fact that he and Chen are old comrades.
The Ma Ying-jeou myth, on the other hand, is falling apart after repeated scandals in the city government. Ma's weakness -- the fact that he lacks decision-making ability -- is gradually being revealed. Kaohsiung has now become a glittering metropolis, but Taipei residents have not seen much improvement in the city's administration in recent years. Nothing much has come of the conversion of the Sungshan Tobacco Factory into the Big Dome Sports and Cultural Complex, of which Ma is so proud.
The incident in which the abused "little sister" Chiu was refused admission to many of the city's hospitals should send this clear message to Ma: We've had enough.
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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