In the elections in January next year, the public will be casting their votes for the president and legislators. Of course, it is expected that people’s focus will be on the next president, but the public is not only electing the national leader and their running mate; also they will be electing a governing team that will lead Taiwan for the next four years.
Despite much bad humor and stalled talks, the “blue-white alliance” finally had a breakthrough with former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as a witness. The two parties finally agreed to a poll selection to decide whether Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) or New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, would run for president with the other as his running mate. The two parties want to form a coalition government.
As Taiwan has never had a coalition government before, this is an unsettling possibility. If the Hou-Ko ticket is voted into office, it would mean that the president and vice president are not of the same party, while the heads of major offices would also be appointed by different parties. This would cause confusion and perplexity since there is no single leader and would complicate the issue of political responsibility.
During his first presidential term, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) also tried pushing for a coalition government by inviting Tang Fei (唐飛) of the KMT to be his premier and Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) to be the minister of the environment. However, both Tang and Hau joined the Cabinet as individuals, not as recommendations by the KMT. Even so, they left their positions before long. As a result, the idea of a coalition government is not realistic and could pose further problems.
Even within the same party, there are competing factions that often lead to discord or quarrels, but there is a party chairperson to decide and resolve conflicts. In the case of a coalition government, if Cabinet members of different parties come into conflict, which party chairperson would be the adjudicator? Even the president cannot have a say on the matter, because Cabinet members’ power does not come from the Cabinet leader or the president.
One case in point being Ko, who said in a TV interview that if the Hou-Ko ticket triumphs in the end, he would do his best to “oversee” Hou and the KMT. A vice president who supervises the president? Now that would be a first in politics.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德) said that next year’s election is a choice between democracy and autocracy. This means that if people decide to cast their votes for pro-China parties, it would be choosing a pivot to autocracy over democracy, values that most Taiwanese do not endorse. If the Hou-Ko ticket comes to pass, the result would be a choice between a single, well-ordered government, and a chaotic, coalition government. The public will have to draw upon their wisdom to make the right choice.
Chen Wen-ching works in environmental services.
Translated by Rita Wang
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
Historically, in Taiwan, and in present-day China, many people advocate the idea of a “great Chinese nation.” It is not worth arguing with extremists to say that the so-called “great Chinese nation” is a fabricated political myth rather than an academic term. Rather, they should read the following excerpt from Chinese writer Lin Yutang’s (林語堂) book My Country and My People: “It is also inevitable that I should offend many writers about China, especially my own countrymen and great patriots. These great patriots — I have nothing to do with them, for their god is not my god, and their patriotism is
RSS