Before the March 22 election, president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) cherished “Taiwan” like a passport to enter the Presidential Office. With his broken Taiwanese, he succeeded in convincing many Taiwanese to vote for him.
After Ma won the election, unfortunately, he has begun to “expose his horse feet.”
Rightfully, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers have criticized Ma and say he is now treating Taiwan like toilet paper (“Ma is treating ‘Taiwan’ like toilet paper, DPP says,” April 4, page 2).
Before the election, Ma kept saying Taiwan this, Taiwan that and whatever he said was all for “Taiwan.” His campaign slogan was “Taiwan marches forward.” Wisely, he never mentioned a single word of the “Republic of China” or “China” in his campaign speeches.
Ma’s attitude toward Taiwan has reversed. He has practically abandoned the Taiwanese in his speeches. He has begun to talk about the so-called “1991 consensus and one China with respective descriptions,” “acceptance of one nation,” and possible name changes of “Taiwan Postal Service” to “Chinese Postal Service” and “Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall” to “Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.”
Democracy, rather than dictatorship or individual worship, is the value of Taiwan. The new president should never move backward or “dismantle the bridge after he has crossed the river.”
“When the law meets Ma, it makes a turn” is a popular saying in Taiwan now. In the peoples minds, even if Ma does or says something wrong, he is not guilty before pan-blue judges and acceptable to the pan-blue news media. No one is above the law. This is a golden rule for any administration.
The DPP should be saluted for their sportsmanship after losing both the legislative elections and the presidential election. They have not staged any protests or demonstrations.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
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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