It has been less than six months since Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
On Tuesday Ma announced that the KMT is in "extremely dire financial straits" and could not pay its employees their year-end bonuses.
The party backtracked late on Tuesday night and announced that it would pay bonuses amounting to half-a-month's salary -- thanks to a front page story in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) -- sometime next month. While KMT union director Liu Chien-sung (
That is the first question that Ma should be made to answer. The second question is if Ma, who prides himself on being a party reformer, can't resolve the KMT financial puzzle, then why should anyone believe that he is either willing or able to clean up the party's stained reputation by eradicating its "black gold" problem?
Maybe the party really does have financial difficulties. KMT spokeswoman Cheng Li-wen (
Yet it is business as usual for the party's top brass. Despite forcing early retirement on many people, and delaying the miserly bonus it grudgingly agreed to pay, the KMT headquarters had the gall to ask its staffers to entertain the top-ranking party officials at last night's year-end party.
This meshes with the continued deafness of both Ma and the party to calls to return those stolen assets that once belonged to the government -- either transferred to the party at no cost by the KMT government when the Republic of China took over Taiwan at the end of World War II, or purchased later by the KMT with money provided by the government.
Who else is too blind to see the motive behind the pan-blue camp's long-running boycott of a proposed statute on the disposal of assets improperly obtained by political parties?
"Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself," IBM founder Thomas Watson once said.
If ambiguity and mendacity are the way Ma conducts himself with regard to the KMT's financial affairs, and insensitivity and callousness inform his treatment of party staffers, perhaps pan-blue supporters should reconsider their belief that Ma is the man who will lead a return to the promised land -- the Presidential Office -- in 2008.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
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