The opposition parties' sensational campaign to recall President Chen Shui-bian (
US political scientist Dennis Wrong pithily remarked that when a politician claims to act in the public's best interest, the appropriate question to ask is, "Who really stands to benefit?" The political reality, Wrong observed, is all too often one of politicians being manipulative and concealing the fact that their actions benefit the privileged few.
The effort to oust Chen was doomed from the beginning and so is the effort to topple the Cabinet, begging the question of why the pan-blues are destabilizing society in the pursuit of an untenable agenda. In seeking to recall Chen, both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
In turn, this begs several other questions: Who will benefit from this pan-blue agenda? Who is cashing in on the allegations leveled at Chen's family and aides? The short answer is Soong but not Ma.
Chen remains completely unscathed by the pan-blues' attempts to unseat him, and the recall motion and plans to topple the Cabinet have instead served to rally the pan-greens around their president. Ma initially opposed the recall of Chen and instead advocated a vote of no confidence in the Cabinet to take the edge off Soong's call to remove Chen, but then changed his tune to support the recall motion. Soong has not only successfully secured an admission ticket to the year-end Taipei mayoral race by proposing to oust Chen, but he has also managed to make Ma a scapegoat for opposing the no-confidence vote.
Soong has once again placed himself directly in the limelight. However, this does not mean that Soong has outperformed Ma; he has merely upstaged him. That Ma lacks key political skills is common knowledge. Recent events have further demonstrated that he also lacks leadership ability, and his claims that he is a tough party leader are beginning to ring hollow. Ma did not wish to launch a presidential recall bid at first due to his fears that Soong would use the bid to hoard pan-blue voters.
To counterbalance Soong, Ma had little choice but to seek to topple the Cabinet. Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
The stakes are especially high in light of the fact that PFP and KMT legislators alike are unwilling to risk their jobs by forcing the Cabinet to resign en masse -- and the issue is dividing the KMT. If Ma wields his power to push for a vote of no-confidence in the Cabinet, he might very well split the KMT into opposing factions, a move that would seriously diminish his authority.
Soong accurately assessed that KMT legislators did not support Ma's call for a no-confidence vote but rather wanted to support the recall campaign. He took advantage of those KMT legislators opposing the no-confidence vote by saying that if the recall motion failed, the next step would be to topple the Cabinet. He thus turned a situation disadvantageous to the PFP away from the PFP and toward the KMT, making Ma support the recall motion over toppling the Cabinet. This placed responsibility for opposing a no-confidence vote on Ma and took the pressure off Soong himself.
The recall motion against Chen illustrates how a political has-been like Soong can manipulate a highly popular figure like Ma. What's more, Soong has effectively marginalized KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Hau Lung-bin (
Soong has abandoned any scruples that he may have had left and bet the house to win the Taipei mayoral race. The recall motion was a dud, but it made enough of a bang to throw Ma and Hau off balance. Soong's real reason for the recall charade, however, is to put on a good warm-up act before for the real show: the year-end mayoral race.
Chin Heng-wei is the editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.
Translated by Daniel Cheng
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017