For those long-suffering Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters who have been despairing at the party's fortunes of late -- not least the limp display of the candidates for the party's chairmanship -- the cavalry may have arrived. And, as usual, the cavalry does not wear green.
People First Party Chairman James Soong (
He may have disappointed many with his presidency, but Chen Shui-bian (
Soong might just be a political corpse after his party's drubbing in last month's local government elections. But the KMT should be wary. As the titular character once theorized in H.P. Lovecraft's short story Herbert West: Reanimator, "unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life," which is as splendid a description of Soong's latter-day political career as one could hope to find.
Soong has two close losses in successive presidential elections to provide him with all the motivation he needs to grasp at power until he is in his own grave. He also has the pragmatism to cut deals with the enemy that appall even the sycophants in his own party. It is entirely consistent, therefore, for him to run for Taipei mayor at the risk, yet again, of handing victory to the DPP. With no administrative power base and running out of cash, Soong needs a foothold around the Presidential Office so that he can get inside it.
Wiser heads in the KMT will be most irritated at this development, though they should hardly be surprised. For his part, Ma must be wondering what to do next. In unusually candid language, he has ruled out cutting a deal with Soong -- though it must be tantalizing for him, at the risk of a grassroots backlash, to give away Taipei City for a promise that Soong will not run for president in 2008. Because, as with Taipei City, the KMT's greatest obstacle in recovering executive power also remains in the shape of James Soong.
It didn't have to be this way. If the KMT had not withdrawn charges against Soong for stealing the party's money, Soong might have found himself in prison for the rest of his natural political life. The KMT, instead, reanimated Soong for short-term gain, recklessly indifferent to the dangers that would follow.
If Spike Lee were ever to make a biopic on Soong, it would have to be called He's Gotta Have It. And if Soong indeed runs for Taipei mayor, the resulting declarations of pan-blue camp unity may well become a Summer of Sham for the KMT. Against all expectations, 2006 is shaping up as an entertaining year for politics after all.
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,
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
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
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