President-elect Ma Ying-jeou (
The people of Taiwan -- who gave Ma 58.45 percent of their votes against 41.55 percent for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rival Frank Hsieh (
Many Taiwanese might also have decided to vote for Ma because they were fed up with corruption scandals and government bickering between legislative and executive branches, but admittedly the election results shows they were more concerned about their salaries and living standard.
On Saturday night, Ma made his first move by saying that his first priority would be to establish direct air links with China and allow more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.
During his campaign, Ma promised to establish a "cross-strait common market," or as his rivals labeled it, a "one China market." But it will take more than a decade to turn this idea into reality because it involves talks across the Taiwan Strait that would certainly touch on the sensitive sovereign status issue on which neither side is likely to concede.
There is also the question of when and how China would want to work with the new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government on these matters -- the ball is in Beijing's court, not Taipei's.
Ma's real priority should be forming a Cabinet that is both professional and capable of dealing with the nation's immediate economic problems, especially the issue of rising consumer prices.
The DDP government has tried to intervene in the market through a series of price-control measures, including freezing both energy and utility prices in the wake of recent dramatic fluctuations in global commodity and raw material prices.
Although these price controls were aimed at easing the import-driven inflation facing this nation, they have also resulted in growing losses at state-run energy and utility companies.
It is easy to say that the caps on fuel prices, for example, are unfair for all taxpayers because people who drive cars are generally more financially capable of coping with inflation. The problem is how the new government wants to address this issue: Will it scrap the controls on fuel prices or impose an energy tax to curb consumption?
During their campaign, Ma and Hsieh both advocated closer economic links with China, despite differences in their approaches. But Taiwan and China have experienced completely different industrial structure and investment environments over the past eight years. Many Taiwanese businesspeople who left for China eight years ago are now trying to relocate elsewhere because of China's new labor and tax laws.
Ma now faces the test of whether his economic policies can safeguard the interests of overseas Taiwanese businesspeople, while improving Taiwan's investment environment and increasing domestic consumption.
Other problems such as unbalanced regional development in Taiwan, the growing gap between the rich and the poor and the demise of local agricultural sector will also pose challenges to Ma's government.
Problems such as a slowing US economy and global financial woes, however, will always have a negative impact on Taiwan's export-oriented economy, which the new government will also need to be prepared to handle.
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,
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