It's a sad day for Taiwan when someone like Shih Ming-teh (施明德) -- a man who sacrificed 25 years of his life for the cause of democracy -- sacrifices his dignity to become a tool of the pan-blue camp and their media hounds.
His "1 million people to topple A-Bian" campaign is not just plain ridiculous, but also undemocratic, something you would think Shih would understand more than most.
So what if 1 million people contribute to his campaign? By my calculations, that comes out to only about 4.5 percent of the population. Is this really enough to force a head of state to step down?
If the support of only 5 percent of a country's citizens was needed to depose a president, then I am sure US President George W. Bush would have been kicked out of office long ago, as almost 50 percent of Americans cannot stand the guy.
You really have to ask what the real reasons are that would make someone like Shih sell himself out. Does the China Times or some other pan-blue comic have pictures of him in compromising positions with Sisy Chen (陳文茜)?
OK, so the president's men have proved the old adage that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," but would things get any better if Chen resigned?
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) might have a clean image, but the rest of the KMT still remains rotten to the core.
And anybody who believes any differently is just fooling themselves.
Henry Blackhand
Taipei
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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