We can be grateful that not everybody has a boss like Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
As well he might. The mass protest outside the Presidential Office triggered by Lien's speech has put the KMT stalwart between a rock and a hard place: On one side, as governor of the capital, it's Ma's job to secure public safety; on the other hand, standing in the way of the KMT's party apparatus could lead to a confrontation the mayor is not ready for.
Exactly what kind of trouble he is in became clear when Taipei Deputy Mayor Ou Chin-der (
Four years ago the protest problem was solved more directly -- police used water cannon to cool tempers and disperse the crowd.
Ma knows that the same tactic now would be disastrous for him. With his eye on the KMT's presidential nod in 2008, the mayor does not want to blast his core support down Ketagelen Boulevard live on TV.
Further, a removal of the protesters would put him at loggerheads with Lien, who is using the vocal support as a bargaining chip in the game he's playing with the country's democracy. To send this leverage home would not put Ma in his boss's good books.
So the Taipei mayor has delved into his bag of emergency powers and declared the protest legal, an act that normally would require notification a week in advance.
But despite this flexibility over the protest, in the past week Ma has seemed less like the obsequious employee Lien has leaned hard on for support over the years.
While Lien stood side by side with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
All this makes it look as if the mayor is distancing himself from the top brass, and by extension the protesters camped outside the Presidential Office. This will be put to the test in today's rally.
Ma has already said he would take part in the rally that he himself gave permission for, but it remains to be seen how visible he will be. To march arm in arm with Lien and Soong would mean he has thrown his lot in with those who are trying to circumvent democracy.
A less conspicuous presence would leave Ma with a greater number of options once the election dust has settled.
But Ma will need to show more backbone than was on display when he tried to offload his city administration's responsibility for the protesters onto the central government if he wants to lead a pan-blue offensive in 2008.
After war with China and 40 years of authoritarian rule, the KMT's structure has hardened to the consistency of concrete. For Ma to bring about real change would require nothing short of a mini-revolution that would irrevocably tear the party apart.
But unless someone like Ma achieves this and forms a viable opposition to the KMT's flotsam, the party will disappear without a trace and democracy will be dealt a critical blow.
Lien is the captain of a disintegrating KMT, and he will go down with his ship; Ma can still make it to the lifeboat.
Andy Morton is a copy editor at the Taipei Times.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has