Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng's (
"There have been discussions at home and abroad, as well as in public and in academia, about the appropriateness of the political elite of a minority ethnic group governing a majority ethnic group," Wang had said on Monday as he pulled out of the campaign for the KMT's presidential nomination.
Wang's notoriously opaque and evasive language on this occasion could not hide his anger at the way in which the KMT has facilitated former chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (
That Wang would make such a damaging comment suggests that the party is on the verge of ensuring that the spoils in the legislative nomination process will be unevenly distributed in favor of Mainlander candidates. The KMT's carefully cultivated image of ethnic inclusiveness is now at risk, and its response in practical terms will be compelling viewing in the months to come.
The curious thing about this development is that for several elections ethnicity has been the KMT's weapon of choice in attacking the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, even more so than the economy. This has been bolstered by the KMT's claim to a far more balanced membership in ethnic terms, with majority support from the Mainlander, Hakka and Aboriginal minorities and a sizable chunk of support from the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) majority.
Also curious is the fact that Wang was originally the man the inner sanctum of the KMT wanted to take over as chairman. What this represents in terms of a possible brawl in ethnic or factional terms is not clear -- but it does not bode well for the party so close to an election season.
The DPP, once again, has been thrown a lifeline that it has not earned. It now has the opportunity to hack away at the KMT's rhetoric and practice on issues of ethnicity and identity, and if DPP strategists are half competent, there will be riches for them to mine all the way until the presidential election.
It must be said that Wang's comments have the unmistakable odor of sour grapes. His humiliation at the poll for party chairman, which Ma won, and his withdrawal from the KMT presidential nomination race may have inspired him to speak more direct language, but this does not mean that he had any hope of gaining the nomination in a fair race.
But there must be more to explaining Wang's behavior than petty sniping born of spurned ambition. If he were alone in his fury, there would have been a much angrier response from KMT friends and foes alike. Instead, there was an embarrassed silence, broken only by the odd plea for party unity.
What is clear is that the KMT is starting to struggle to find a common theme other than the fact that it is not the DPP. There might have been a time when this had currency, but no longer.
Wang's comments will reverberate for some time, especially among those unnerved at the idea of Taiwan being ruled by a Mainlander for the first time since dictator Chiang Ching-kuo (
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,
RSS