The "deep green" backlash to the 10-point consensus reached between President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) continues. A split between Chen and the rump of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), on the one hand, and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) on the other, seems inevitable unless Chen makes a sincere and immediate effort to account for himself.
Four senior figures in the pro-independence group -- Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), Wu Li-pei (吳澧培), Ng Chiau-tong (黃昭堂) and Alice King (金美齡) -- have submitted resignations from their posts as presidential advisors, though Wu has had second thoughts.
Even within the DPP, severe criticism has accompanied the signing of the accord. DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (
While Chen personally may not have much to lose, since he will most likely never again run for public office, the same cannot be said about his party.
Yesterday, for example, the chairman of the DPP's Sanchong headquarters, Tung King-hsing (董金興), resigned from the party and said he would join the TSU. It is no secret that Sanchong has a large number of DPP supporters: In December's legislative elections the city contributed more than 100,000 votes to the DPP. Tung said he couldn't stand the pressure and outrage from the grassroots any longer.
This raises the question of whether the DPP's performance in the upcoming mayor and county commissioner elections will suffer as a result.
Chen's behavior in the face of criticism from the pro-independence camp has not helped things. His remarks during a videoconference with members of the European Parliament, in particular, have only increased the anger of the "deep greens." Comments that he would not change the national title during his final term and that Lee would not be able to do so either, were he still in office, are two examples of this.
Equally inflammatory was his description of the campaign to change the title of this country as "delusional."
Chen does not seem to understand the reason for the outrage. As Lee said both before and after Chen's meeting with Soong, reconciliation with the PFP is something to be encouraged. However, what is the point of reconciliation if one's soul and core values are abandoned?
Had Chen always been as "pragmatic" as he is today, he would not have come as far as he has. It is very difficult to believe that Chen became the "pragmatic" man that he is overnight. Does this mean that during the latest legislative and presidential election campaigns when Chen trumpeted these ideals, he never once believed they could be accomplished while he was in office?
There is another question that Chen should keep in mind. If he does not patch things up with the "deep greens," then where will he turn -- who will give him the time of day -- if the agreement with the PFP falls apart?
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,
RSS