Pan-blue lawmakers on the legislature's Procedure Committee on Tuesday once again blocked a number of bills from being put on the legislative agenda, despite a directive from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
The blocked bills included the long-stalled arms procurement budget, nominees for the Control Yuan and chief state prosecutor, draft legislation on the handling of stolen political party assets and the unfreezing of government budgets.
Ma's comments that his party would consider reviewing the arms procurement package and Control Yuan confirmations were completely ignored by his party's legislators, making people wonder if Ma can really be considered an effective leader when his party caucus disregards his directives.
When Ma assumed the KMT chairmanship in June last year, many people hoped that under his leadership the party would become a loyal opposition, reviewing draft legislation on its merits instead of opposing proposals just to oppose them.
Even critics expressed the hope that Ma would fulfill promises made by his predecessor Lien Chan (
To prove he is a determined party chairman -- and that he has the makings of a presidential candidate -- Ma must keep his promises and exert pressure on his party's caucus to review the long-stalled bills that matter to the people's wellbeing.
Maybe the problem is not Ma's inability to lead, but his unwillingness to make tough decisions and then stick with them. Ma often appears afraid to call the shots, especially when it comes to reining in his party's lawmakers. The best he can come up with is a weak "I will respect the caucus' decision."
The Cabinet's request to buy six Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile batteries, a squadron of 12 anti-submarine P-3C helicopters and eight diesel-electric submarines has been stalled so long there must be cobwebs on the paperwork. The watchdog Control Yuan, whose job it is to monitor the conduct of the government and civil servants, has been idle since Jan. 31 last year when the terms of its previous members expired, yet the opposition continues to refuse to review the list of nominees submitted by the president.
The KMT, as the largest opposition party, has been successful in paralyzing the Democratic Progressive Party administration by refusing to review almost all government-sponsored bills in the legislature. The people of Taiwan, however, are the ultimate victims of this long-running farce.
If Ma could start living up to his commitments and get his party caucus to follow his instructions, he would undoubtedly win respect from the public.
If Ma wants to become president and lead his party's return to power in 2008, he has to stop relying on his popularity as the KMT's leading candidate and actually do something worth voting for.
As the 2008 presidential election draws nearer, the public is waiting to see if Ma has any substance behind his dazzling facade, or if he is content to remain little more than a cardboard cut-out.
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
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,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS