It's been a truly blue week for pro-unification splittists here in the Republic of China on Taiwan (or whatever.)
Now that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) political funeral is underway, it is clearly time to prepare for the real funeral of his military backer, General Ma Ho-ling (馬鶴凌). As a man of honor, he will surely keep his word.
As for his unfilial son, who recklessly carried on with his candidacy for the KMT chairmanship despite his father's promise to kill himself should he do so, he must be punished for acts against Chinese culture, namely wannabe patricide.
Cry-baby People First Party (PFP) Taipei City Councilor Mike Wang (王育誠) continues the tradition of the PFP's elected officials bearing false witness for political gain in the manner of their shameless mentor, PFP Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安).
All, mercifully, is not lost for the Greater China green card clique: Lien dynasty scion and lumpen rapper Sean Lien (
William Meldrum
Taipei
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,