Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma's name has been dragged through the mud over the last six months as every aspect of his personal life and professional career have come under intense scrutiny.
The results do not make happy reading for his fans.
First, of course, was his indictment. Ma immediately resigned from the KMT chairmanship in line with the party's "black gold" clause, but then stood by silently as the party repealed the clause -- which he had introduced -- because it would have prevented him from running as the party's presidential candidate.
Then during the trial, Ma maintained that he believed the special mayoral allowance was for personal expenditure, but outside of court he had said the opposite -- that he considered it was only for public expenditure -- directly contradicting himself on a number of separate occasions.
This was followed by the Taipei Arena scandal, where a senior official in Ma's former administration was indicted on charges of bid rigging in return for bribes. There was also the small matter of another Ma aide being found guilty of forgery in the special allowance case and being sentenced to 14 months in prison. Ma himself was not implicated in the accountant's actions, but it showed that despite all his stated intentions, the man who preaches clean politics is as helpless as the next man when it comes to ridding Taiwan's political scene of corruption.
Next came the chaos of the Maokong cable car project, where Ma's haste to get the project finished during his tenure left Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
But most damaging of all was Ma's vow to run for president even if found guilty in his first trial. This showed a blatant disregard for the rule of law and the judiciary, and ran contrary to everything that he once stood for -- and indeed was once in charge of as minister of justice.
The transformation from prissy, principled, politico to profligate, power-hungry presidential candidate was complete.
On the surface Ma may once have promised to be different from the KMT of old, but the last few months have proven beyond doubt that a Ma presidency would consist of the same old vintage KMT, just rebottled. The same vintage that voters rejected in the last two presidential polls.
The KMT's belief that an innocent verdict holds the key to the presidential palace -- demonstrated by the joy on the faces of KMT officials and Ma supporters outside the court -- may prove to be misplaced as the ugly memories of the last few months will have put off many moderate voters who were previously planning to stump for Ma next March.
Because while Ma was proclaimed innocent in court, he is most definitely guilty of letting his party's desperation to regain power cloud his judgement.
Whether this will have a definitive effect on the outcome of next year's presidential election is hard to predict, but it is safe to say that many people will never look at him in the same light again.
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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