We need to cut former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
His upbringing has fashioned him in such a way that an awakening is -- and will always be -- beyond his reach. We humble Taiwanese daily reflect on how gullible we were to believe that dictator Chiang Kai-shek (
However, Ma has been and will always be spared "enlightenment." His deep-pan-blue background, his ethnicity, his colonialist attitude, his Harvard education and, most of all, his "movie star" image, are beyond reproach.
How can we ask him to turn against his father's dying wish and renounce the goal of eventual "reunification"?
How can we expect him to twist his tongue and speak proficient Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) or think like us when there is not a drop of Aboriginal blood in him? (Of course, this needs to be qualified, for I have heard that former KMT chairman Lien Chan (
How can we expect Ma to allow the budget and the arms procurement bill to cruise through the legislature when he browbeats us with his colonialist superiority, which defines him as the conqueror and us as the conquered?
His deep-pan-blue forbears financed his Harvard law education with the money stolen from poor Taiwanese.
Naturally, they enjoyed his loyalty as he acted as a student spy and raised his persecuting voice against Taiwanese political activists at home and abroad. This loyalty is undoubtedly ingrained in his being and has become part of his DNA -- which is why he will continue to frustrate the interests of Taiwanese.
Furthermore, he is a pretty chap and can proudly say that he has amassed a not inconsequential following of termagants who invariably shout for joy as he jogs by them in his shorts. Some of these are his most ardent defenders in the legislature, willing to go to the most ridiculous extremes to hen-peck government officials during hearings with the most unfathomable nonsense. With friends like these, how can one help but be puffed up?
In view of all this, when we question his "core values," when we are amazed by his fawning comments on the economic achievements of the Singaporean regime (which overlook its authoritarianism), when we are puzzled by his facial expression after his disastrous meeting with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Quite to the contrary, he will continue to smirk at us and to despise us -- he simply can't help it.
Yang Chunhui
Salt Lake City, Utah
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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
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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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