Long before President Chen Shui-bian (
Just as soon as Chen announced that the council had officially "ceased to function" and the guidelines "ceased to apply," KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Given the high vote threshold required to recall a president, and Ma's admission that the motion is unlikely to be approved by the necessary two-thirds of the legislature, why all the fuss?
Ma said the KMT needs to express its condemnation of Chen, regardless of the likelihood of a recall motion being passed.
Yet one can't help but wonder if Ma is acting as China's footsoldier, or simply showing off in a bid to please Beijing, just as he did a while back when he said he hoped the KMT Youth Corp would one day produce a leader like Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Just think how delightful it must be to Hu to know that the leader of this nation's largest opposition party sees him as a role model -- and to see how fast Ma is willing to jump into a brawl with Chen, whom Chinese leaders rank right up there with former president Lee Teng-hui (
In a recent interview with Newsweek magazine, one of Ma's more predictable statements was that unification with China is the ultimate goal of the KMT.
One wonders if Ma hesitated even for a moment to think about the impact his words would have on the nation's military. In view of China's more than 700 missiles targeted at Taiwan, how can the nation's service members build up their consciousness that China is the biggest threat to Taiwan's national security when they know that this country's main opposition leader wishes to unite with China some day?
In a recent interview on the BBC's Hardtalk program, host Stephen Sackur noted that China had deployed more than 700 missiles at Taiwan, and Ma replied: "Yes, and not just Taiwan, but other places too."
Yet Ma has not been heard to protest the growing number of missiles: Perhaps he feels Taiwan shouldn't fear China's military deployment because it is part of China.
Given that Ma has long been regarded as the KMT's most likely contender for the 2008 presidential election and possible future leader of this country, one only hopes that he realizes that his every statement and deed is being closely watched and analyzed by the public, Taiwan's allies and other international observers.
He has yet to demonstrate a firm willingness to stand up for Taiwan's interests or strong ability to lead. His performances this week are unlikely to convince his critics of otherwise.
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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