When former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (
Not a word was said about another former president, Lee Teng-hui (
Democracy puts the people first. During Chiang's authoritarian rule, the Taiwanese people counted for nothing. He often spoke of democracy, but that was all it was -- talk. But we cannot disregard what he said just because of who he was. When Lien quoted Chiang, he wanted to show that he also understands democracy. Regrettably, he doesn't understand that the people should come first.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Prosecutors Office announced that it was closing its investigation into the 319 assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (
But Lien, stressing that one has to "approach an issue from the people's perspective" ridiculed the decision, calling it the laughingstock of the international community and saying that "the KMT would expose the truth for the people, for the country and for history." From the March 19 shooting to the lawsuits challenging the fairness of the election and demanding that it be declared invalid, Lien has called anything that doesn't meet his expectations a joke, which is very different from what the public feels.
The pan-blue camp has been fighting ever since March 19 last year, but they have offered no solid evidence for their endless political accusations. Even the international media are tiring of this situation. Think about it: the KMT is well-connected in the intelligence community and has a lot of private investigators and ballistics experts. Despite this, they still cannot find any hard evidence to support their claim that the shooting was staged. Isn't this odd?
The pan-blue camp's shadow boxing in fact only satisfies its own paranoia. The roots of this paranoia lie in the unwillingness of Lien and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to face up to facts. They and their retinue of fantasy writers think that as long as the 319 shootings remain in doubt, Chen has not won the election and Lien and Soong have not lost it.
In fact, fabricating politically disputable issues has long been a forte of the Chinese people. One classic example is the anecdote of the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who was said to have forged the will of his father, the Kangxi Emperor, so that he could ascend to the throne.
Just like Mao Zedong (毛澤東), many a politician in China believes that lies will become the truth if they are repeated often enough. Now, many would rather believe in the juicy details in the unofficial history of the Yongzheng Emperor than the truth that has been revealed by serious historical research, which only goes to show that such political skulduggery by politicians can still be influential.
The pan-blue camp has adopted a similar approach by holding tenaciously onto the 319 assassination attempt. Their method is very simple: Since we cannot find any hard evidence to back up our accusation that the shooting was staged, we will simply do all we can to discredit the investigation and give free rein to our imagination in creating an endless series of "Bulletgates" aimed at making the public doubt the credibility of the prosecutorial and police investigations.
Pan-blue camp media reports of an opinion poll showing that only 19 percent of respondents were ready to accept the Supreme Prosecutors Office's decision to wrap up the case is of course just one necessary part of this approach.
In short, what the pan-blue camp has been hoping for is not the gradual resolution that the public hopes for, but rather that the victims of the shooting, Chen and Lu, should also become political victims.
The blue camp's defamation strategy in fact aims to create a social division, where those who believe will do so forever, and those who do not believe will never do so.
Is this what Lien means by saying that "You always have to approach an issue from the people's perspective, and solve the problems according to the needs of the people?"
The rejection of the result of last year's presidential election is tantamount to negating the democratic choice of the people. Slandering prosecutors and the judiciary is no different from letting politics supersede the rule of law. This is simply an attempt to encourage political obscurantism. Lien has now stepped down, and Soong is likely to follow suit. The Taiwanese have had enough of their farce.
The pan-blue camp, to quench their thirst for power, have not shrunk from trampling on Taiwan's democracy and allying themselves with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in order to control Taiwan. Indeed, they should feel ashamed and remorseful for having used the words of Chiang. Taiwan is, after all, a country under the rule of law where the judiciary should deal with judicial matters and politicians with political issues.
Politics should be put aside and now that the judiciary has put an end to the case, so should the politicians.
Translated by Daniel Cheng and Perry Svensson
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS