President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is being sworn in today to his second term as president. Today also marks the fourth anniversary of the end of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) one-party dictatorship.
Following this year's presidential election, despite some unrest, society managed to maintain order, with people of every walk of life going about their business and the economy gradually recovering.
China still continues its suppression of Taiwan. A few days ago, Beijing issued a threatening statement accusing Chen of moving toward independence by planning to draft a new constitution.
The US, however, showed its commitment to cross-strait security by sending the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to patrol the waters off the Philippines and by warning China not to make any reckless moves.
Taiwan is thankful for what the US has done. Although Taiwan-US relations were put to the test during the presidential election due to Chen's insistence on holding a referendum, the friendship between the two countries will endure, in view of shared democratic values and the firm support the US has offered over the years. Taiwan cherishes this friendship and looks forward to more solid relations.
It is to be hoped that people from both the ruling and opposition parties will offer a loyal critique of Chen's performance during his second term, and uphold stricter standards.
Chen did not win an outright majority of the vote in the 2000 election -- and the opposition remained in control of the legislature -- so Chen constantly ran into obstructionism on the part of the opposition parties. Things were made worse by the fact that Chen was a new hand at governing the nation and that he had to overcome the burdens of decades of KMT "black gold" policies.
However, this time Chen won the support of a majority of voters, making this victory more important than the one four years ago. He now has four years' experience and his government is no longer a new government. He is thus responsible for the success or failure of his policies.
This newspaper, as a public institution, will therefore act as a social conscience, and not only encourage Chen but also criticize him when appropriate.
In a two-party democracy, the ruling party and the opposition are both bound by responsibilities: The ruling party cannot be arrogant and the opposition cannot avoid responsibility because it's in the minority.
These duties are inescapable, which means that in the event of a national or social crisis, the ruling party is duty-bound to eliminate the crisis. Opposition parties cannot escape responsibility for cooperating with the government to solve a crisis simply because they are not in a ruling position. This is the true sense of mature party politics.
Unfortunately, in the ethnic confrontation triggered by differing opinions about national identity, the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) have been unwilling to bear their responsibilities. They created conflict following the election, trying to push the nation into long-term turmoil to gain political benefit.
The opposition camp has long served as a tool of China, echoing Beijing's stance on the cross-strait issue. The KMT's pro-localization faction has called for party reforms, and many have suggested that the word "Chinese" be eliminated from the party's name. However, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
The KMT's Central Standing Committee yesterday passed a proposal for a merger with the PFP. According to the plan, the party's name will remain the "Chinese Nationalist Party" after the merger. Party reform is absent from the plan -- one sees only Lien and PFP Chairman James Soong (
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS