On Thursday, the pan-blue-dominated legislature made many shocking and unprecedented cuts to the government's budget for this year. It is easy to see why some pan-green lawmakers are calling the budget cuts "retaliatory" in nature. A closer examination reveals that many of the cuts are not only often quite personal -- targeting specific individuals against whom the pan-blues hold a grudge -- but also have a very negative effect on the operation of the government. The only end being accomplished by the opposition is to teach the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government a lesson: The pan-blues are flexing their legislative muscle in an attempt to force the government to give in to its demand on issues in which the two camps do not see eye to eye. Behavior of this sort is completely irresponsible and unprofessional and should be condemned.
It came as no surprise that President Chen Shui-bian (
As if that were not enough, the legislature also demanded that the various special committees set up by the Presidential Office -- including the committees on human rights, science and technology, and constitutional reform, among others -- should be dissolved on the grounds that they have no legal basis. It should be well within the executive branch's power to set up these committees for consultation purposes. Furthermore, many of these committees were set up in accordance with the demands of the general public. Under the circumstances, the legislature can only be seen to be placing vengeance above all else.
The other two main targets were National Security Council Secretary-General Chiou I-jen (
At the end of the day, this country and its people will be the ones paying the real price, as the National Security Council cannot continue to function without funding.
As for Yao, he was "blacklisted" for repeatedly engaging in verbal arguments with pan-blue lawmakers. In addition to the major cuts made to many of the GIO minister's budgets, three-quarters of the GIO budget, excluding funds for utilities and personnel, is also being frozen.
One cannot help but wonder when this sort of childish behavior on the part of the legislature will cease. Don't the lawmakers know that every decision they make on the legislative floor has an impact on the well-being of the citizens of this country? If not, then they have no business being there. If so, they should learn to act in a more mature and responsible manner.
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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