What ever sympathy the moderates and pan-green supporters may have felt for the campaign of former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-Teh (
From the outset, the plan made people question whether Shih and his gang had gone too far and were flirting with extremism.
If Shih had any sense left, he would stop threatening to launch a strike. Such talk will only distance a large number of people who -- for a variety of different reasons -- feel highly disappointed with Chen but would choose to put up with him for a little longer over taking the country down the path of self-destruction.
When talk of a general strike began to surface, six industrial groups, including the Chinese National Federation of Industry and the Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association, immediately called on Shih and his followers to refrain from pursuing the idea.
The disapproval of the business sector for this course of action is clear. Whatever complaints business may have against Chen for the current state of the economy, they dislike even more any talk of a strike. After all, Taiwan has never had a general strike. Launching one would set a precedent that Taiwan's business sector does not want to see.
If Shih persists down this path, most pan-blue politicians will be forced to distance themselves from his cause. Politicians have future elections to think about. While the newly assembled legion of A-bian haters is probably enough to get Shih elected to whatever post he chooses -- if, that is, he decides to return to politics -- this throng is not large enough to put key pan-blue politicians into office.
They have to worry about how people in other parts of society and elsewhere along the political spectrum perceive this rally. The business sectors' opposition to a strike could also translate into reduced support for individual pan-blue candidates around election time. And that means less money for increasingly expensive campaigns.
It is impossible to ignore the everyday people who have supported Shih's rally -- they identify with his idealism and the call for moral rectitude. But would their support be sufficient to make them join in a strike? This is nothing like donating NT$100 for the anti-Chen campaign, indicating support for Chen's resignation in polls or even joining the sit-in.
What is at stake is people's jobs, which puts bread on the family table and pays for school tuition fees. When the price for ousting a political leader with a less than clean moral record is so personal and so costly, how many people would actually join the cause?
This fact has not been overlooked by Shih's organizing team, which explains why Shih has been changing his tune -- if only slightly -- when pressed about the possibility of a strike.
Most people realize by now that the sit-in by itself isn't going to be enough to force Chen to step down. This is why Shih is making the risky move of threatening a strike.
So what happens next? It is not in anyone's interest for the impasse to continue indefinitely. Perhaps it is time to think about how to provide a way for Shih to exit the scene gracefully. Accomplishing this task should be the number one priority for the DPP government and Chen.
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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