Post-election conflict has mired the judicial process since the presidential poll, and the Legislative Yuan is once again becoming a battlefield.
The legislature has yet to establish a culture of rational debate and often triggers "saliva wars" with the help of media sensationalism. Sadly, this will only become more intense with the approach of the legislative elections in December.
For example, legislation for significant constitutional amendments was blocked and postponed by the legislature on May 28 without thorough discussion. In contrast to this, legislators recently debated for one week the redundant issue of whether Taiwan should send troops to Iraq. Even Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng's (杜正勝) display of a map -- in which Taiwan and surrounding countries were rotated 90 degrees -- has been used by some legislators to attack him.
As for the would-be deployment of Taiwan's Marines to Iraq, that suggestion was raised by two US House representatives. Whether it will be passed by the US House is unclear. But even if the US Congress does pass a resolution to that effect, it does not obligate Washington to act.
So the US administration has not made any request, and Taiwan's government has merely talked about the feasibility of it all.
Meanwhile, local politicians conduct interpellations based on news reports, giving their imaginations full rein and severely condemning the government for the two US congressmen's proposal as if the whole thing was really going to happen.
And if some lawmakers acted ridiculously, their diehard supporters acted hardly any better. Some of them burned US flags in front of the American Institute in Taiwan, while others cut up their US passports.
These excessive responses, which turn vague proposals into actual events, are exactly the kind of political trick that has become common since the presidential election.
The war of words over the Taiwan-centered map, for its part, exposed the extreme ideology of certain legislators. Tu only wanted to make it clear that people can view Taiwan from many different angles and perspectives.
By putting on display a map with keener local awareness, he did not force all maps of Taiwan to "lie down," as some legislators alleged.
In fact, those legislators targeted him simply because his historical, geographical and humanistic ideas vary from those of ideologues who insist that Taiwan is a border area of China.
The map issue served the interests of local news stations that value sensationalized conflict.
This could have been a meaningful debate, but under the thumb of a certain ideology and media hype, the issue was a reduced to a circus of "rota-tion," during which an opposition legislator asked if Tu would be willing to lie down while answering her questions.
No wonder Vice President Annette Lu (
Yet there is hope. During a recent public debate on whether the government should build cable cars on the nation's highest mountains, argument proceeded point by point on both sides without significant departure from the topic.
The media was also able to present different voices concurrently. In light of improvements in public debate on public affairs, the legislature desperately needs to pick up its game.
Lu Shih-xiang is a journalist.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and