For those long-suffering Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters who have been despairing at the party's fortunes of late -- not least the limp display of the candidates for the party's chairmanship -- the cavalry may have arrived. And, as usual, the cavalry does not wear green.
People First Party Chairman James Soong (
He may have disappointed many with his presidency, but Chen Shui-bian (
Soong might just be a political corpse after his party's drubbing in last month's local government elections. But the KMT should be wary. As the titular character once theorized in H.P. Lovecraft's short story Herbert West: Reanimator, "unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life," which is as splendid a description of Soong's latter-day political career as one could hope to find.
Soong has two close losses in successive presidential elections to provide him with all the motivation he needs to grasp at power until he is in his own grave. He also has the pragmatism to cut deals with the enemy that appall even the sycophants in his own party. It is entirely consistent, therefore, for him to run for Taipei mayor at the risk, yet again, of handing victory to the DPP. With no administrative power base and running out of cash, Soong needs a foothold around the Presidential Office so that he can get inside it.
Wiser heads in the KMT will be most irritated at this development, though they should hardly be surprised. For his part, Ma must be wondering what to do next. In unusually candid language, he has ruled out cutting a deal with Soong -- though it must be tantalizing for him, at the risk of a grassroots backlash, to give away Taipei City for a promise that Soong will not run for president in 2008. Because, as with Taipei City, the KMT's greatest obstacle in recovering executive power also remains in the shape of James Soong.
It didn't have to be this way. If the KMT had not withdrawn charges against Soong for stealing the party's money, Soong might have found himself in prison for the rest of his natural political life. The KMT, instead, reanimated Soong for short-term gain, recklessly indifferent to the dangers that would follow.
If Spike Lee were ever to make a biopic on Soong, it would have to be called He's Gotta Have It. And if Soong indeed runs for Taipei mayor, the resulting declarations of pan-blue camp unity may well become a Summer of Sham for the KMT. Against all expectations, 2006 is shaping up as an entertaining year for politics after all.
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
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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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