Yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma announced his resignation as he promised he would if indicted, but he also announced his presidential candidacy.
Seeing its hopes of returning to power next year diminishing, the pan-blue camp is panicking. Followers of Ma and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Some KMT members argue that the nation should not be deprived of a presidential candidate solely because of some "absurd" indictment. They have abolished the party's black-gold clause, which calls for the suspension of party membership in the case of an indictment -- a regulation that was introduced by Ma -- and originally hoped to relieve Ma of his pledge to resign as chairman if indicted.
Others are hoping Ma will decide to run as a pan-blue independent. Still others say that he should continue with a KMT presidential bid regardless of the consequences.
All of these groups are actually helping to damage Ma's political credibility.
With party regulations changing so that Ma can become the KMT's presidential candidate, voters will question his integrity.
If Ma persists in his quest for the presidency, it will be difficult for him to claim to be different from President Chen Shui-bian (
When the first family tries to delay the legal progress of first lady Wu Shu-jen's (
On the other hand, running as an independent candidate and waging war on former party comrades would generate the ugliest pan-blue split vote ever seen. Wang's supporters say that any attempt to amend the party charter to benefit Ma will have consequences. It will be intriguing to see what consequences these are.
The campaign to depose Chen called for integrity, but now the pan-blue camp does not want to abide by these principles. If Ma proceeds with this course of action, it will not only mar his reputation, but also make it impossible for the KMT to talk about rules of any nature with credibility.
A Harvard doctor of law and a former justice minister should not take this approach. He cannot justify his preferential treatment to those who have been disciplined in accordance with the party charter in the past.
On the same day, Ma has been indicted for corruption and has shown disregard for the spirit of law by challenging the KMT to endorse him.
The pan-blue camp may be willing to turn a blind eye to Ma's indictment, but the public may not be as charitable.
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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