President Chen Shui-bian (
Pan-green supporters have urged voters to cast a punitive ballot in Saturday's National Assembly elections to teach Chen a lesson. Under pressure from declining support for his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chen faced two and a half hours of interviews on Sunday and Monday nights for the same political TV program. During the interviews he said that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
A punitive vote would probably mean a vote for the TSU in Saturday's poll, putting the DPP into second or third place. This message of dissatisfaction would serve to embarrass Chen. The purpose of the vote is to elect representatives for a National Assembly which will amend the Constitution in accordance with a package of revisions passed by the legislature last August. These include the inclusion of referendums into the Constitution as a means for ratifying future amendments, halving the number of legislators from 225 to 113 and adopting the "single-district, two-ballot" legislative electoral system. The assembly will not address changes to the national title, flag and anthem.
Recently, pan-green media and supporters have lambasted Chen for his willingness to shake hands with the Chinese leadership in the wake of Lien and Soong's visits. He described their visits as "tossing a stone to test the water" and "praiseworthy," adding that Lien's remarks during his visit complied with his role as an opposition leader. What's more, Chen even said these visits were just a prelude to the main attraction. Chen's remarks, which sought to create an atmosphere of cross-party and cross-strait reconciliation, have seriously upset many pan-green supporters, some of whom believe that Chen has deviated from the "one country on each side of the Strait" formula.
Any change in cross-strait relations touches on the fundamental security of the people of Taiwan. Without prior broad-based discussion on any such change, Chen seems to be in a great hurry to meet with China's President Hu Jintao (
As a national leader, Chen should not only have long-term goals and a comprehensive strategy for achieving them, he should also consult with the nation in the decision-making process. But he seems to think he can see more clearly than others and can afford to ignore the people. We do not object to Chen seeking to improve ties with China, but he cannot be allowed to play fast and loose with Taiwan's security, or endanger Taiwan's sovereignty and the power of the people.
The crisis that the present administration faces has been precipitated by Chen's increasingly domineering manner. He has now attacked former president Lee and the TSU simply to bolster his own policies -- seemingly betraying those who have supported him and risking a split within the pan-green camp. Chen has brought most of these problems on himself. He should take the advice of former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (
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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