Following its electoral defeat in Kaohsiung and its loss of support in the Taipei mayoral race, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has held a number of meetings to pinpoint the reasons for its failure.
Reasons cited have ranged from blaming the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for indulging in foul play to blasting President Chen Shui-bian (
The feebleminded KMT continues to ignore, or stubbornly refuses to acknowledge, that its pro-China propaganda is increasingly remote from mainstream public opinion.
In view of last Saturday's showing, some KMT members have proposed that the party move its headquarters to Kaohsiung, while others have suggested Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
The DPP headquarters is not down south nor do many of its second-generation Mainlander members speak fluent Taiwanese, but no one questions the DPP when it trumpets itself as a pro-localization party.
Shouldn't the KMT trumpet the pro-localization banner even louder, given that it has been in Taiwan for almost 60 years?
Many foreign workers or spouses learn to speak competent Mandarin within a couple of years of their arrival and many come to embrace Taiwan's culture and history with fondness and appreciation. The KMT should be ashamed that it remains a stranger in a strange land. Many of the KMT's old guard and their descendents still know no Taiwanese, have no appreciation for Taiwan's culture and don't identify with the land that has sheltered them for so long.
Time and again the KMT under Ma has sworn that its ultimate goal is unification with China. It's performance last Saturday should be a wake-up call for the party to reassess its policy and platform.
According to a recent survey by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University, the percentage of respondents who consider themselves "Taiwanese" increased from 56 percent last year to 60 percent this year. A survey released yesterday by the Straits Exchange Foundation suggested that 57 percent of people identify themselves as Taiwanese.
It is time for the KMT to become pro-localization and identify with Taiwan. It is time for it to ditch its outdated "one China" policy and stop deluding itself that China is its motherland and that one day it will rule there again.
It should take a lesson from two-time British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, who once said: "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?"
Ma should take this piece of advice if he still harbors ambitions of winning the people's hearts and the 2008 presidential election. For a start, why not change the party's name to the Taiwan Nationalist Party?
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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