Whether or not Taipei Mayor and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Following the revelations of Ma's mayoral fund, it has emerged that these special accounts have been available to some 6,500 local government officials since the 1950s.
With details of these funds now emerging -- along with earlier exposure of the special 18 percent preferential interest rate for pensions enjoyed by retired teachers, soldiers and civil servants; the five-month salary payment given to certain government workers for funeral expenses; and other things such as tax-free earnings for military staff and civil servants -- the public is slowly but surely becoming aware of how recklessly large amounts of their tax dollars have been misused over the years.
Ma's claim that remitting half of the special mayoral fund into his personal bank account was "normal" and lawful just goes to highlight the lack of oversight for public money that has prevailed and how shady practices have become institutionalized.
The whole government system is littered with such examples. But should we really be surprised?
After all, the KMT -- the party that created Taiwan's political system -- has long been a party driven by nepotism and corruption.
Historians note that a failure to combat corruption was one of the main reasons why Chiang Kai-shek's (
And rampant corruption is why, after just 18 months of KMT rule under executive administrator Chen Yi (
The KMT's system of patronage was imported wholesale from China along with the Nationalist government and allowed to flourish during its five decades of party-state rule.
But it was done with good reason: the KMT needed to foster a culture of party loyalty to help preserve its rule on Taiwan.
And it was this need that led to the creation of such generous benefits for anybody that was willing to serve and remain faithful to the party.
Under a system like this, is it any wonder that career politicians like former KMT chairman Lien Chan (
Ironically, it is now time to thank the KMT and the pan-blue camp, because their ceaseless and frenzied attempts to harm the president and win back power have inadvertently opened a can of worms that will possibly help to bring crashing down the flawed system that it profited from for five decades.
The fallout from the mayoral and presidential fund scandals is now threatening to spread, affecting officials past and present from both sides of the political divide, and hopefully bringing an end to yet another unwelcome relic of the party-state era.
But the most disappointing aspect of the whole episode is the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) role in bringing this about.
After years of hounding the KMT, accusing it of corruption and amassing stolen assets, the DPP seemed content after coming to power to sit back and enjoy the spoils of its victory instead of getting to work and rectifying all that was wrong with the rotten system it inherited.
That inactivity could now cost the party dearly.
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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