During a press conference Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) announced that he was ready to commit suicide if KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is not elected after KMT lawmakers intruded on DPP candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) Taipei campaign office.
What does this statement reveal? It shows KMT members do not really care about social order. Fai's statement shows that the KMT is not about maintaining and enforcing modes of relating and behaving. It is not about conserving social structures, institutions and practices. All that matters is to get the post, make Ma the president. It is all about the crown.
During the campaign, the KMT has tried to convince us that the increasing number of suicides is the result of the erroneous policies of the present government and that the new government and the new president can somehow fix it.
Fai's statement that he would consider suicide is nothing but a farce. A politician must be able to face the ups and downs of the profession he or she is voluntarily engaged in and must take full responsibility for his or her actions and words.
The lack of integrity shown by these KMT politicians casts doubts on whether a KMT victory would really be "a change that Taiwanese people should believe in."
Hanna Shen
Taipei
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS