More than two weeks of heated discussions and speculation about which political party might win the legislative speakership ended with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator-at-large Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) elected as the new speaker on Thursday.
However, “how to recall the legislative speaker” became a hot search term that same day, while new debates arose the following day.
As neither the KMT with its 52 legislative seats, nor the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with its 51 seats, won more than half of the 113 legislative seats in last month’s elections, both parties’ speaker candidates visited the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislative caucus, hoping to gain the support of its eight legislators.
However, the TPP on Wednesday morning announced it would field its own candidate — Legislator-at-large Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) — with the party’s eight votes all going to her, and that if a speaker was not decided in the first voting round, they would not vote in the second round.
The DPP saw the TPP’s decision as direct support for Han, while the KMT was of course glad to see the move and its caucus convener Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) praised the TPP for standing with it in opposition to the DPP, saying that the KMT and TPP might continue to cooperate, including on assigning members to committees and selecting committee conveners.
Unsurprisingly, the KMT secured the speaker and deputy speaker roles.
However, veteran Taiwanese independence advocate Chen Yung-hsing (陳永興) on Friday published an open letter, detailing how he passed messages between TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and DPP Chairman and president-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday evening, sparking more speculation and debate.
In his letter, Chen said that on the evening of Jan. 26, he received a phone call from Ko, who asked for helpt to relay messages to Lai about the possibility of the DPP supporting Huang in the first round of voting and the TPP supporting the DPP’s deputy speaker candidate in return. Although both sides were cordial and expressed goodwill, he knew the negotiations would fail as both parties refused to concede.
Chen’s letter sparked debates among the TPP and DPP, as Ko said that DPP members approached him first and that he only called back in response to Chen’s prior inquiry, while DPP spokesperson Justin Wu (吳崢) said the DPP did not propose the idea of supporting Huang as speaker and its former deputy speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) as the deputy speaker candidate. Ko yesterday said he might file a defamation lawsuit against Wu over allegedly proposing the murky speakership quid pro quo.
Moreover, it sparked speculation from pan-blue camp members of whether Ko wanted to coerce the DPP into cooperating with the TPP, and only yielded to letting the KMT win after its secret negotiations with the DPP failed, and if so, the KMT might need to reconsider trusting Ko and his party.
As details of the DPP-TPP negotiations remain unclear, the incident, as well as the failure of a KMT-TPP joint presidential ticket bid, Ko’s unproven claim that a broker offered him US$200 million to quit his presidential bid and other incidents, have shown his unreliability and opportunism, often making decisions at the last moment based on political machinations and leveraging for influence by threatening to shift alliances, rather than having principles.
As a new third party that could cast decisive votes on critical issues, the TPP could have a real impact if it stays true to its claims of serving the public interest and making decisions based on rationality and professional and scientific analysis, but if it continues to engage in double-dealing for personal or partisan gains and thinks it can outsmart everyone through manipulation, it is likely to be stuck once the KMT, DPP and the public repeatedly see through its tricks and no longer trust it.
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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