What would the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government do without former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁)? It’s hard not to ask that question after a recent volley of Chen-centered excuses by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his officials.
Addressing the host of problems and scandals that have embarassed the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, including the poor facilities and overflowing toilets, Ma said it was Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government that failed to maintain the facility properly during its eight years in power.
Commenting on the recent slew of environmental disputes, including controversies over the Dapu (大埔) farmland seizure and the fate of Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology’s proposed petrochemical plant, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said they were the fault of Chen’s government for giving them initial approval.
Speaking on the state of the economy, Ma again accused the Chen administration of stalling Taiwan’s development.
Chen has clearly become a convenient scapegoat for the Ma administration, even though Ma is well over two years into his presidency.
While there may be some truth to Ma’s and Wu’s criticisms of Chen and his administration, Ma, not Chen, is the head of state, and the KMT, not the DPP, is the governing party.
In case it hasn’t come to Ma’s attention, he was elected because people were dissatisfied with Chen’s governance. Ma was voted into the Presidential Office because people thought he could change things for the better, not so he could shirk responsibility by blaming everything on the former administration. Meanwhile, much of his “can-do” image came from claiming full credit as Taipei mayor for the many projects initiated by his predecessor — Chen.
Whatever happened to Ma’s pledge that the KMT — being the party holding both executive power and a majority in the legislature — would shoulder the “full responsibility that comes with complete governance”?
Not to mention that Chen has paid the price, with ongoing detention, a tarnished reputation and lawsuits that continue to plague him.
Ma is so busy trying to score points against the former administration that he appears oblivious to his own administration’s spotty record thus far.
For starters, the latest statistics from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics showed the nation’s richest 20 percent of households earned 8.22 times as much as the poorest 20 percent, the highest gap recorded since 2001.
The unemployment rate reached a peak at 6.13 percent in August last year, and average salary growth, meanwhile, dipped to its lowest point ever last year at minus 3.47 percent.
Government statistics also show that the number of notifications of suicide (encompassing actual and attempted suicides) last year in February, the month usually regarded to have the fewest cases, totaled 2,076 — 675 more than what was recorded in the same month in 2008 under Chen. The number of reported cases of domestic abuse also increased in January last year by 8.9 percent over the same month in 2008 under the DPP administration.
Statistics show that elementary and junior high school students unable to afford school lunches totaled 120,000 in 2006, 140,000 in 2007 and 170,000 in 2008, before surging to 226,000 last year.
Ma can point the finger all he wants at Chen and the DPP administration, but the numbers speak for themselves on the performance of his own government.
Ma, more than two years into his presidency, is no longer a rookie. It’s time he acts like a leader and shoulders his responsibilities instead of simply shifting the blame onto a convenient scapegoat.
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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