Let us imagine a situation where a man is dining at a restaurant. When he orders, he asks for something not spicy. Anything would do, just not spicy. The cook therefore randomly adds all kinds of seasonings in the dish, except chili peppers. The dish comes out sweet, salty and sour. Even some expired ingredients have been added to it. Would you like to try this dish? It is called the “non-green alliance.”
On the surface, it looks like all kinds of groups that oppose the pan-green camp can join and work together, but the alliance is actually a terrible hodgepodge. To put it more straightforwardly, the non-green alliance is rife with conflicts and contradictions between the groups of which it consists. Each group wants to take the lead and no one is willing to play second fiddle. The so-called non-green alliance might soon end up in a series of self-contradictions. Before the alliance has a chance to confront the pan-green camp, it might well start consuming itself.
With “non-green” in its name, the alliance should clarify why it is against the pan-green camp. If the non-green alliance is against “anti-communism” or against “anti-unification,” Taiwanese must express their opinions on these issues.
There are already some conflicts inside the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It is difficult to say whether the KMT’s New Taipei City Mayor and presidential candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) can deal with all of the related challenges.
However, the KMT is still attempting to work with the white camp and collaborate with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), and whose political attitude is unclear. The KMT is in disarray, and the situation might become even more chaotic.
From the perspective of the white camp, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has become the second favorite for the presidency. If Ko wanted to collaborate with someone and form an alliance, he would certainly think about asking Gou rather than Hou, given that Hou’s support rate has been the lowest among the three candidates. Obviously, although the KMT wants to work with the TPP, the effort of bringing the white and the pan-blue camps together appears to be very much a one-sided affair with regard to which party is putting in the most effort.
Be it blue, white or green, every political camp must propose its own concrete agendas to win over voters. A restaurant’s dish must be unique enough to attract customers, but no customer would allow a restaurant to serve a dish that has been cooked haphazardly. Similarly, voters would care about the content of each political camp, rather than agreeing with anything that is non-green.
Chen Wen-ching works in environmental services.
Translated by Emma Liu
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
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,
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
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,
RSS