It's about time that the pan-blue camp realized what damage it is doing to Taiwan and put an end to its ridiculous efforts to recall the president.
Its attempts to spark a Philippines-style "people power" movement and oust the president have so far failed miserably, with only diehard pan-blue fans answering the call to take to the streets.
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that the Taiwanese electorate was not surprised to find out that some politicians, their aides and relatives may have been abusing their positions to fill their own pockets. If they were concerned about such things then why would the people of Taitung and Taichung counties regularly elect people like Wu Chun-li (
Or could it be the fact that People First Party Chairman James Soong (
It is patently obvious to anyone with an iota of political knowledge that the real reason for Soong's leading role is because he is trying to rescue his flagging career and bolster his popularity for a crack at the Taipei mayorship. Since Ma Ying-jeou (
Of course the president's inner circle and his family should be punished if they are found guilty of corruption. But they should not be subject to "trial by TVBS" or any other kind of PFP or KMT-led kangaroo court. The nation's investigators should be allowed the time and space they need to get on with their job.
We have already seen what a one-sided legislative probe can produce with the 319 shooting special truth investigation committee: a lot of hot air, speculation and absolutely no concrete proof.
But the saddest thing about this whole recall affair is that it has cruelly exposed Ma's weak position. Many fence-sitting Taiwanese must have had high hopes for Ma and the KMT after he swept to the chairmanship last year on promises of clean politics and party reform.
And many of them may have believed that he had miraculously transformed the KMT from a super-rich party of vote-buyers and career carpetbaggers into an ultra-clean party of paupers.
When plans for a recall bid first appeared, Ma was the voice of reason, in contrast to other pan-blue figures screaming for the head of Chen Shui-bian (
By letting himself be press-ganged into supporting the recall bid, Ma has shown that the same deep-blue elements that cannot stand to see Taiwan ruled by a pro-localization regime still hold the KMT's reins of power. It has become increasingly clear that they will stop at nothing in their bid to oust the president, even if it means creating more division in Taiwan's already deeply-split society.
The high threshold required to recall the president means that their bid has been doomed from the start, and the pan-blue camp is well aware of this. They have only further demonstrated to the general public what a bitter, hateful bunch they really are.
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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