On Wednesday, six aspirants for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) picked up registration forms for the chairperson March 26 by-election, despite the disappointment of some pro-reform KMT members who had urged the party leadership to lower the threshold for candidacy.
Under the KMT’s regulations, only party members who have served on the KMT Central Committee or Central Advisory Committee are eligible to seek election.
The Central Committee has 210 members, who are elected at the party’s national congress from a pool of no more than 420 candidates, half of whom must be nominated by the KMT chairperson and the other half by about 1,600 party delegates.
As for the Central Advisory Committee, its members are appointed by the KMT chairperson, but must be approved by the congress delegates.
Candidates are required to pay a hefty, nonrefundable “handling fee” of NT$1.6 million (US$47,417) and collect the signatures of at least 3 percent of total KMT members, of which there are about 320,000.
The handling fee seems to be another deliberate attempt by the party’s leadership to prevent younger or less well-off members from contending for the post.
The party’s 3 percent endorsement threshold also poses a challenge to aspirants who are not among the top echelon or who are not a member of any of the longstanding factions.
These limitations are why in the past decade the KMT chairperson elections or by-elections have started to look like a game of “musical chairs,” with the post being occupied mainly by the party’s old guard or its devotees.
The requirements are apparently a strategy put into place to rig the elections, to ensure that the party’s top position, the holder of which is almost guaranteed a presidential nomination, remains exclusive to the party’s chosen few.
The KMT’s humiliating defeat in the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections has given rise to some unusual, but constructive reform proposals, particularly from younger members who have repeatedly called for the abolition of the chairperson electoral requirements and the realignment of the party’s “spirt” to become more Taiwan-centric.
Sadly, the responses of the KMT leadership and the New Party, whose founding members quit the KMT more than two decades ago, suggest that the pleas for reform are falling on deaf ears.
Instead, KMT headquarters said that it plans to leave the matter to the discretion of the new chairperson, as a revision of the rules would have to be approved at a national congress, which is unlikely to be held before the by-election due to time constraints.
Such an excuse is preposterous in light of the fact that — after receiving the green light from the KMT Central Standing Committee — it took the party’s leadership just 10 days to hold an extempore national congress and nullify the presidential candidacy of Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) in October last year.
New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming’s (郁慕明) remarks that the KMT’s priority is to rid itself of members who disagree with its “spirit” and core values provides further evidence that the KMT is a bigoted party that only pays lip service to reforms.
In the same way that people always say they are going on a diet “tomorrow,” the KMT’s oft-stated goal of reform looks set to be postponed if it happens at all.
Before then, the party’s chairperson by-election will be just another one of its games — with the result already rigged.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS