It's enough to make you bang your head against a wall.
When President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen might find that there is political capital to be had out of appearing to be a sensitive new-age politician who wants everyone to talk, be friendly and reconcile only to have these overtures rejected time and again. But it is increasingly obvious that Ma, who has embraced his undistinguished predecessor's penchant for treating Chen like a door-to-door salesman, thinks he might be onto something when he looks down his nose at the diminutive president.
When he attempted to start a dialogue with former KMT chairman Lien Chan (
Chen's supporters might do well to ask themselves if he hasn't run out of ideas on how to deal with a re-energized opposition that just won't play ball. In the face of this rigidity, the almost daily, autistic rhetoric of "reconciliation" involving the "23 million people of Taiwan" damages the cause it attempts to champion.
In an ideal world, of course, Ma would adopt the same goodwill toward the executive that he has curiously adopted toward the nation's gay and lesbian community -- all the more laudable because of its defiance of the grisly conservatism of his KMT mentors on such matters, and the fact that the DPP has been tardy in stamping out institutional bigotry. But this is not an ideal world. Ma is playing a clever game, letting the DPP talk itself into corners and watching quietly in the wings when not making low-key commentary.
Chen must recognize that appealing for reconciliation with the pan-blue camp -- as distinct from reconciliation between ordinary people of different ethnic backgrounds -- is pointless because the rump of the KMT and PFP machines feel that there is nothing to reconcile over, let alone apologize for.
Though it may frustrate those who seek to employ ethno-nationalism to protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression, ethnic conflict has run out of currency as a political mobilizer, except among a few anachronistic brigands of "Greater China" nationalists and a small number of unelectable fringe independence advocates.
The greatest victim of the exaggeration of the role of ethnic conflict in this country is a president who is sincere in wanting to heal the wounds of the past. But by using anodyne slogans of reconciliation to court professional obstructionists, and thus belaboring an electorate that has already come to terms with the KMT's oppressive past, Chen fails to exploit the fact that ethnic conflict is now almost entirely restricted to the Grand Guignol of party politics.
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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