Today, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will create an unprecedented title, honorary chairman, so that current chairman Lien Chan (
Ma, who has consistently called for reforming the KMT and taking action against "black gold," has confused many people by establishing Lien as a kind of "super chairman" -- a move that will only serve to restrict Ma's freedom of action. And why retain Wang as vice chairman after accusing him of corruption? If Ma follows through with his plans, he will simply be entrenching members of the KMT old guard in positions of power within the party, and his mission to reform the party will come to nothing.
Regarding the KMT's ill-gotten party assets, what Ma has proposed is actually little different from current policy. It includes liquidating party assets, laying off party personnel and streamlining the party's bureaucracy. However, we would like to remind Ma that before the ownership of the KMT's party assets is fully clarified, any move to sell the party's possessions would go against the will of the majority of Taiwanese. If Ma panders to the culture of corruption within the KMT, he will simply shoot himself in the foot, and will quickly find that he has created new obstacles on the road to winning the presidency.
Ever since Ma announced his determination to reform the party, and then went on to defeat Wang in a landslide victory, most media outlets have portrayed him as a shoo-in for the 2008 presidential nomination.
Ma's unwavering and confident attitude in this election campaign has been impressive, and has done much to mitigate his reputation for being "wishy-washy." We hope that Ma can maintain this momentum and make good on his promises to reform the party and avoid coming under the influence of the KMT's old guard. If he does, it will just be old wine in new bottles for the KMT, and such hypocritical reforms will not convince Taiwanese voters.
With regard to his expected run at the presidency, just because Ma has won the KMT chairmanship doesn't mean he can rest on his laurels. Next month, elections will be held for the KMT's Central Committee and Central Standing Committee, and this will be the first test for Ma in his new position. If the Ma camp fails to perform well in this round of elections, the new chairman is likely to be left without a solid power base within the party, and his mission to reform the party will be hopelessly compromised.
People are even more concerned about what kind of people the party will put forward for the city mayor and county commissioner elections in Dec. Ma's commitment to party reform will be underlined if the KMT is unable to find some fresh faces that can win the approval of the electorate.
As KMT chairman, Ma will have to personally supervise the deployment of his troops to effectively meet the pan-green challenge. The KMT's performance in the mayoral and county commissioner elections will be a key factor in whether Ma will be able to consolidate his position as supreme leader of the pan-blue camp.
Ma will not be officially sworn in until next month, but even before that, he will face numerous challenges. Later on, he runs the risk of becoming a scapegoat if things go badly in the year-end elections. It is not surprising that some political commentators believe that Ma's election as party chairman is only the beginning of his political troubles. Ma's political future is not as bright as much of the media would like to make it seem.
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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