Here's a personal evaluation of the major players in the recent anti-Chen campaign:
Taiwan's Military: Just when you thought it couldn't get much more depraved in Taiwan, the military in Thailand stages a coup. Despite lobbying by the pan-blue media the military remained impartial, steadfast and strong. Two thumbs up.
Taipei Police: Ever had a jerk for a boss that didn't hesitate to abuse his workers for his own personal benefit? The general public sympathized with the Taipei Police and the hardships they were forced to endure for a month. Despite being faced with extraordinary circumstances and exhaustion they remained disciplined and professional. Two thumbs up.
President Chen Shui-bian (
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九): Ma initially disapproved of the campaign, but quickly changed tack and launched into a bizarre series of about faces and contradictions, all the while playing every opportunity for personal political gain. In the end, he could no longer control the monster he helped create and whined like a spoilt brat that it wasn't his fault. Two thumbs down: Depose.
Taiwan's (Pan-Blue) Media: It should be very clear by now that the media has made a mockery of all journalistic standards -- providing a heavily biased and distorted representation of the campaign. The scary part is how effective they were in swaying public opinion. Also two thumbs down.
Shih Ming-teh (
People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜): The Great Helmsman of a tiny splinter party that exists only to gratify his ego is also a convicted tax evader after getting busted for laundering millions of dollars to the US using the bank accounts of his relatives. Yet he portrays himself as an anti-corruption warrior and insists that the president step down because his wife received US$8,000 worth of department store coupons. What a sad joke. Two thumbs down and a steel toed boot to the arse.
Mike Miller
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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