The recent election of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was attributed in part to his restoration of a river running through Seoul. When Lee was elected mayor of Seoul in 2001, one of his key campaign promises was to remove the freeway covering the Cheonggyecheon River and to restore the waterway as a symbol of the city's beauty.
This caused me to reflect on Taiwan's presidential election and the first time I met Kaohsiung environmental activists and academics involved in the clean-up of the Kaoping River.
In 1999, I was appointed "Ambassador to the Aboriginal Cultures of the Kaoping River" by the Kaohsiung County Government and was given a tour of the most beautiful and most polluted sections of the river. I was also shown what efforts were being made to improve it and Kaohsiung City's Love River.
Years later, the results are impressive and the credit must go partly to the commitment of Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (
Both of these rivers are widely known success stories, illustrating the importance of environmentalism and community development.
By contrast, I was invited several years ago by the Taipei City Government when Chinese Nationalist Party presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
Accompanied by reporters, we saw dead pigs float by in the water, which can fairly be described as toxic. This was clearly an atrocity against the environment and allowing it to continue unchecked was a grievous failure of government at all levels.
Lung asked for my recommendations, which I enthusiastically provided based on my river conservation work in Canada with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Yukon Conservation Society and Friends of Yukon Rivers.
I described in detail an annual river festival that should be held on the banks of the Tamsui River, featuring original music and works by local artists portraying their impressions of the river. A CD and a coffee-table book could be published annually to help fund the festival and educate more people about the issue.
I also suggested that academics and water specialists be involved in the festival, updating the public on the pollution and its causes and documenting any changes in water quality.
They would also suggest which government departments should take responsibility for enforcing laws that penalize offenders and correct the problem. They could issue "report cards" to those departments.
I felt this would bring media attention, increase government accountability and inspire government action.
Lung supported my proposals and we presented the plan to the media.
Years later, the Tamsui River remains one of the most polluted in the country. All the talk of improvements seem to have been nothing more than a media exercise. It looked great on TV, but it resulted in little or nothing being done by Ma's administration.
As Taiwan goes to the polls, I can't help but recall my personal experiences with the two candidates and the adage: "By their fruits will you know them."
As one who believes that government officials bear the responsibility for the entire community and environment in their jurisdiction, I trust in the rivers to endorse the candidate who is best to navigate the currents of change facing Taiwan.
Matthew Lien is an environmentalist and musician from Canada.
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