Charitable smearing
Dear Johnny,
Frank Hsieh's (
Frank's campaign would make much more sense if he offered alternatives to Ma's polices or pointed out his weak points. However, with all these smear tactics -- starting with A-bian (
On the new allegation of a lack of transparency over dealings with the Taipei Fubon Bank during Ma's time as Taipei mayor: Why didn't the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) express its concern earlier? Now it just looks like they're doing it to smear Ma and make him a victim of a DPP conspiracy.
Erik Lenhart
Johnny replies: Frank Hsieh's campaign would make more sense if the DPP registered itself as a charity.
That way, after they lose the presidential election, DPP strategists will have something constructive to do with their time other than enquire into their rivals' passport status.
The road to an insurgency
Dear Johnny,
I'm another politically minded Jimmy Waiguoren who reads your column each week, but haven't bothered to write until now.
I was a little disturbed by an article in the Taipei Times entitled "Seeking younger voters, Hsieh hits YouTube Web site," (March 4, page 3), in which a poll conducted by the United Daily News suggested that 60 percent of respondents between 20 and 29 years of age support a Ma Ying-jeou-Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) ticket -- compared with 21 percent for Hsieh and Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌).
Putting aside the inaccuracies of these types of polls, it kind of got me thinking. First, if this is remotely true then it's a cause for concern.
Second, maybe Hsieh on YouTube isn't as silly as it sounds.
And third, how would it be if someone like yourself was able to contribute more directly to a dialogue with Taiwan's younger generation?
Being a student at National Chengchi University, I'd certainly be supportive of anything that raised awareness of the potential dangers of a KMT-dominated legislature and a KMT president.
Have you ever considered blogging your personal views in Chinese and English to make them more accessible? Or getting savvy like Hsieh and starting up a Facebook group with an unashamedly political bent?
Although too late for this election, I reckon something like this would make a valuable contribution to "keeping the bastards honest," as we say in Australia.
Karl Haby
Taipei
Johnny replies: I keep getting these e-mails from old school chums who have started up accounts on Facebook. Problem is, in order to look at them I have to open my own Facebook account. The hell with that!
The whole thing reeks of viral marketing and is only so different from spam. So you can count old Johnny out on that one.
As for a blog ... to be honest, Karl, blogs are like newspapers. The vast majority of the effort that goes into them is forgotten the day after, unless you write stuff so deep that people think your archives are worth poring over. But if you give me cash ...
Nah, for now I think I'll do something more constructive: Prepare an anti-communist guerrilla insurgency.
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,
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
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has formally announced his intention to stand for permanent party chairman. He has decided that he is the right person to steer the fledgling third force in Taiwan’s politics through the challenges it would certainly face in the post-Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) era, rather than serve in a caretaker role while the party finds a more suitable candidate. Huang is sure to secure the position. He is almost certainly not the right man for the job. Ko not only founded the party, he forged it into a one-man political force, with himself
RSS