After being blocked no less than 41 times in the pan-blue dominated Procedure Committee, the long-stalled NT$480 billion (US$14.4 billion) arms procurement bill has finally made it onto the agenda for formal review by the legislature tomorrow.
Appearing extremely exasperated and having suffered what they described as a "surprise attack" (the pan-green members took advantage of their pan-blue counterparts' tardiness by initiating a vote on the bill before most of them had arrived), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party alliance vowed to overturn the bill, with KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Why so much anger from Ma? What great sin have the pan-greens committed by voting to send a bill that aims to enhance the nation's defensive capability for review?
If, as Ma has often claimed, his party supports legitimate self-defense and is against only a "sucker's" arms purchase, then wouldn't the legislative review provide a good opportunity for lawmakers from his party to engage in a rational debate with their pan-green counterparts?
Ma may not be too pleased about it, but tomorrow the public will finally have the chance to see whether the pan-blues are capable of deliberating reasonably over the bill, as opposed to simply stalling it repeatedly in the Procedure Committee.
In making every attempt to pass the arms procurement bill, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has already made several compromises, including cutting the budget from NT$610.8 billion to NT$480 billion, and proposing to pay for the six anti-missile Patriot Advanced Capability-3 batteries from the Ministry of National Defense's regular budget.
The pan-greens are of the opinion that the purchase of the eight conventional submarines, 12 P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft and six batteries of Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems are essential to Taiwan's national defense, and key to maintaining the balance of power with China.
Regardless of whether or not this is the case, the pan-blues' ceaseless rejection of the bill in the Procedure Committee has drawn questions from the public and fueled concern in Washington that Taiwan may, after all, not be serious about its own defense.
Without doubt, the ball is now in Ma's court. The legislative review will provide one and all with an opportunity to see whether Ma is sincere about Taiwan's defense.
To many Douglas Adams fans, the number "42" is endowed with mock-mystical power, as in his novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is revealed as the number from which all meaning -- of life, the universe and everything -- can be derived.
While the fact that the DPP succeeded in passing the bill on its 42nd attempt, sadly, is no more than a coincidence, an awful lot -- if not everything -- is at stake, and the public will be watching to see what role the pan-blues choose to play, and asking the question with real meaning: "Who do you stand for?"
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,
RSS