Concluding the large “Fury” (火大) protest in Taipei on Jan. 13, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) announced plans to seek the recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators who have “failed to listen to the voice of the people” and possibly President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Such an effort, though deriving from justifiable anger at the Ma administration’s less-than-stellar performance on a variety of fronts, cannot serve as a stand-in for actual policy alternatives on the opposition’s part.
In fact, the recall of officials, which the smaller Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) has since said it would support, is a non-policy that, if mishandled, could undermine the democratic foundations of this country and end up hurting the opposition’s image.
Aside from making the DPP and TSU sound bitter for failing to secure more seats in last year’s legislative elections, recall plans set a precedent that could come back to haunt them in future. Most problematic is how one defines a legislator’s failure to “listen to the voice of the people” — and who gets to do so.
Although the “recall list” has yet to be unveiled, it has already become clear that the DPP’s definition of “failure” coincides perfectly with a target’s opposition to DPP policies. In other words, DPP policies and “the people” are one and the same, though the extent to which the people will have input in the recall decisions remains to be seen.
There is undeniable danger in a political party resorting to undemocratic tactics — however much one resents the policies adopted by some KMT legislators, those legislators were elected by the public — to solve problems. Unless a legislator has actually broken the law or it has demonstrated that he or she is undermining national security through his or her actions, their removal, much as that of government officials, should be conducted through democratic procedures. This is why elections are held on a regular basis, so that voters can use their retributive powers to remove the bad weeds.
By seeking to work around the system, and by having final say as to which legislators pass muster and which do not, the DPP and the TSU arrogate upon themselves powers that share too many attributes with authoritarianism for comfort.
And in the end, even if the opposition succeeded in removing reprobate legislators, they would find themselves in the same position as insurrectionists who, after toppling a loathed government or political system, are then responsible for running the country. Removing governments is the easy part; governing a nation is where the real challenge lies and for that, one needs a viable alternative in the form of policies that appeal to the public and that can be implemented.
Opposition for the sake of opposition, or the even more drastic removal of elected officials, falls short of meeting public expectations and by no means ensures that come the next elections, the opposition will be able to secure the votes it needs to make progress within the system.
The DPP is perfectly justified in mobilizing against the Ma administration and the KMT, as opinion polls attest to sky-high discontent with their performance. However, channeling that discontent is itself insufficient to turn the DPP and its allies into a political force to be reckoned with, and one that Taiwanese will be willing to give another shot at running the country.
What is needed, above all, lies in the realm of ideas, of strategies to appeal to the polity on both sides of the divide and to the ever-crucial middle ground. So far, Su has failed on that count.
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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