When the campaign to unseat President Chen Shui-bian (
However, a look at the agenda of the legislature reveals that the president's nominations for the Control Yuan and state public prosecutor-general have once again been blocked in the blue-camp-dominated Procedure Committee (the Control Yuan investigates corruption and other illegal behavior by public servants, among other duties).
The prosecutorial system investigates and prosecutes violations of the law, and the prosecutor-general is at the top of the tree. The pan-blue camp is asking that the president be investigated for corruption, but leaves the system without a leader.
So much for pan-blue lectures on graft.
If the pan-blue camp believes that some of the president's nominees are inappropriate, it can vote against those nominees during the review process and have them struck from the list.
Instead, while it is likely that the pan-blue camp is not opposed to certain nominees, it simply opposes the fact that Chen nominated them.
Chen's nomination for prosecutor-general, Hsieh Wen-ting (
The pan-blue camp would therefore rather stop the government from functioning than give Chen the smallest taste of success. And this is the way it has been for more than six years.
It is hard to judge the merit of the accusations that the KMT and pro-China media have leveled at Chen. These corruption allegations require a professional investigation by the Control Yuan and the prosecutorial system -- not hack reporters operating under instructions. Regardless, the KMT has allowed rumors and lies to be spread by refusing to put Chen's Control Yuan nominees to formal scrutiny, thus prohibiting the Control Yuan and the prosecutorial system from functioning.
Opposing graft is a just cause which should be supported by all, but this campaign should not be directed at getting rid of just one person. Irrespective of Chen's fate, there are legitimate concerns to be had over future KMT administrations, given the party's infamous record on corruption. Only a non-partisan legal system has the power to remove graft by the roots.
For a properly functioning legal system, the legislature should give priority to debating Chen's nominees for the Control Yuan and prosecutor-general, establish an anti-corruption agency and make other anti-corruption institutions function more effectively.
Secondly, it should pass the "sunshine bills" that set clearer standards on the use of assets, political donations, capital and lobbying by political parties, public servants and private organizations.
This would create greater political transparency and give voters more power in monitoring the interaction between government and civic society. This is the only path to building and maintaining government integrity.
An anti-corruption movement that only demands Chen's resignation and fails to address the need for a system that can fight corruption is nothing but a front for political wrangling and manipulation.
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,
RSS