The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has always had an uneasy relationship with democracy. It has spoken about it interminably, practiced it little and liked it less. Even after it had reluctantly conceded democratic reform of Taiwan's political institutions, there was no such thing within the party organization itself. Only after two crushing defeats in presidential elections, and the bitter acceptance that it does not have some kind of droit du seigneur on power in Taiwan, has the party itself embraced democratization as a principle of reform. The problem it now faces is that democratization really shows up how far the party has tumbled from its glory days.
The coming election for its chairman is to be the first democratic leadership election the party has ever held. Previous chairman were selected by biddable cabals or simply had their right to the post endorsed by their own flunkies. Even KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (
The problem dogging the party now is just who that rank and file might be. After the election disaster of 2000, Lien organized a re-registration drive to remove from membership lists the millions of members who had joined in the bad old days when it seemed expedient, but had long ago ceased to pay membership dues or take part in party activities. The result was a slimmed down membership of about 1 million.
More than four years later and with another election loss under its belt -- followed, of course, by the "blue terror" of the post-election period -- fewer than 40 percent of those 1 million members have fully paid their membership dues. And of these 400,000 paid-up members, about half are veterans or seniors who either pay no fees at all or pay at a significantly reduced rate.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Wang claims that while party rules approved in 2003 say that a member must have paid his or her dues to have the right to vote in party elections, a specific set of rules for the election of the chairman approved in 2001 do not have this stipulation, nor are they covered by the 2003 rules.
Whichever rules lie behind Wang's casuistry, an argument from simple first principles suggests his view is preposterous. You would not expect a club whose membership dues you had not paid to continue to let you use its facilities. Wang is arguing, in fact, for precisely that right.
Wang's sophistry is entirely self-serving. After all, the rump "paid up" membership is dominated by old Mainlanders who will almost certainly vote for fellow Mainlander Ma. For Wang to have a chance he needs the votes of defaulting Taiwanese.
But on all sides there seems to be an assumption that most of the 600,000 defaulters have either forgotten to pay or are too hard up to pay. The truth that dare not speak its name in this affair is that those 600,000 KMT members might not have paid their dues simply because they no longer want to be party members.
Considering what the party has become under Lien's leadership -- a toady for China -- you can't blame them. But it is interesting to note that in terms of dues-paying membership the DPP is probably now Taiwan's biggest political party.
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
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;
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
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