The weeks of pan-blue campaigning against President Chen Shui-bian (
The fact that the bid was doomed from the beginning doesn't seem to have prevented the pan-blues from continuing with their campaign, oblivious that their actions may actually be causing more damage to Taiwan's reputation than that supposedly caused by the president and his administration.
Most people have probably forgotten that the initial recall bid was instigated by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (
Ting decided to use the signatures he had already garnered for that bid in his latest try after the accusations concerning the president's son-in-law came to light. But then the pan-blues have tried to oust the president so many times over the last six years that every attempt just blurs into one prolonged bid to destroy and discredit the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.
A look at the 10 charges leveled against the president as part of this latest recall bid illustrate what a shame it is: The Chen administration has destroyed the Constitution; thrown politics into complete disarray through its authoritarian methods; severely restricted freedom of speech and suppressed the media. Do the pan-blues really expect anyone to believe such fantasies?
This latest bid to oust the president and harm the pan-green camp's image can be construed as part of a "long war" in the runup to the 2008 presidential election. The opposition has placed so much importance on winning back the presidency that the Taiwanese public is in for a long and arduous media crusade against all things green over the next 18 months or so. But will this campaign really serve the best interests of the opposition?
The recall controversy already seems to have caused a split between People First Party Chairman James Soong (
Ma has already done damage to his clean-cut image of being above the most fervent partisan blue-green scrapping. It looks as if he has decided to pull back and protect himself.
That leaves Soong and his small band of supporters to continue with what is in effect their anti-Chen campaign in front of the Legislative Yuan. Many believe that Soong has taken the leading role in the recall bid as a way to gauge his popularity before announcing a bid for Taipei mayor. If this is the case, then the paltry turnout at the various rallies and other events the PFP has organized over the last couple of weeks should tell him all he needs to know. If he were to stand for Taipei mayor and suffer defeat, it really could spell the end of his career. Soong is far too canny to take such a risk.
It may be true that the DPP administration has not done a great job over the last six years. But if the pan-blues had just been patient, waited another two years and acted like a rational, reasonable opposition that was interested in promoting prosperity, good health and the well-being of the people of Taiwan, they would probably have walked to victory in 2008.
After all, in what is effectively a two-party system, when the public is disappointed with one party then the opposition is more or less guaranteed to win the next time around. But what happens when the electorate is disillusioned with both sides?
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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