Far from clarifying the matter, the Taipei City Government's admission on Nov. 14 that one of its workers had forged receipts to claim reimbursement from Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
Ma, who is being investigated by the Black Gold Investigation Center of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office over allegations he has misappropriated money from the fund, has not given clear answers about his expenditures from the fund.
People are baffled by the contradiction between the Taipei administration's claim to running a "clean government" and its claim that the unspent remainder of the special allowance fund was Ma's personal property.
The public doesn't understand why Ma refuses to publish lists detailing which charity groups he donated money to.
And people want to see a detailed list of which city government personnel received bonuses on Ma's recommendation.
By all means, until Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) is done with his investigation and the courts hand down a verdict, Ma should be considered innocent.
Nevertheless, by any measure, Ma falls well short of adhering to the "highest moral standard" that he constantly lectures others about. Perhaps this is a result of the dual roles Ma performs.
Mayor Ma must have been absent from the meeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma held on Jan. 7 in Miaoli with scores of KMT county and city officials looking on.
At the time, Chairman Ma righteously proclaimed that the KMT "must implement the principles of clean governance."
Chairman Ma said he hoped "all party and public servants would ... dare not to be greedy."
At the event, Chairman Ma instructed members of his own party that "when encountering scandals, one must take the initiative to discover the facts of the matter, deal with it in a forthright manner, be cooperative with investigators and explain the circumstances to the public."
Mayor Ma must have also missed the half-page advertisement that Chairman Ma ran in several Chinese-language newspapers on June 18.
In the ad entitled "The answer is within the hearts of all parents," Chairman Ma detailed the reasons why the KMT supported a recall motion again President Chen Shui-bian (
"How are we to teach our children in the future the meaning of `integrity?'" the ad asked.
"How do we give an answer when a child says: `You can lie so long as you don't get caught by the teacher?'" it asked.
"If we don't punish people who are corrupt, that would mean people tolerate corruption and [as a result] governing officials will become more greedy," the ad said.
Pity Mayor Ma, because if he were to heed Chairman Ma's words, he wouldn't have ended up in the hot water he now finds himself in -- hot water that could cost him his chance to run in the 2008 presidential election.
Then again, maybe it's not fair to hold Mayor Ma up to the "standards" set by Chairman Ma. After all, it may be that Chairman Ma is also a hypocrite who doesn't practice what he preaches.
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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