Last month, former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (
To show her support for Lien, KMT Vice Chairwoman Lin Cheng-chi (
Although everyone is aware that Lien and Ma do not get along well, the incident has made the rift between the duo public. Lien said that he was rather surprised when Ma did not show up at the airport when he returned. Lien's closest aides, therefore, berated Ma, for he had made the outside world aware of the bad blood between the two.
In all honesty, according to KMT tradition, the party chairman is the one who should to be sent off and greeted, not someone who has already stepped down. Considering the power structure within the KMT, Ma's unwillingness to see Lien off or welcome him on return is hardly surprising. The question is: Why was Lien surprised? It is evident that Lien does not want to play second fiddle to Ma. After receiving a pat on the head from Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Lien has held a grudge against Ma ever since he stepped down as KMT chairman. Recently he has said that "many things remain unsaid" and he must feel that Ma has given him a raw deal. The pan-green camp's criticism of the KMT-CCP economic forum was understandable.
However, Taipei mayor hopeful and Ma's "chosen" successor, former Taipei deputy mayor Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川) has openly criticized two trade concessions in the medical field reached at the Lien-Hu meeting, a direct slap in the face for Lien. Perhaps Lien may not care what someone like Yeh, a man without power and position, said, but he will certainly blame it on Ma. The question is: If Ma had showed respect for Lien, would Yeh have dared put Lien down like that?
With Ma's popularity soaring, the only thing that can keep Ma in check is an alliance between Lien and Wang. When KMT Legislator John Chiang (
A new wave of conflict between the mainstream and non-mainstream factions of the KMT has begun, and the battle will be decided on the issues of constitutional amendments and the KMT's primary for Taipei mayoral nominee.
Last week, Hsu visited Lien to explain the conflict between the legislative caucus and the party leadership over the constitutional amendment issue. Afterwards, Lien said that he could not agree with Ma's view that it was inappropriate to discuss the matter and pointed out that any issue should be open for discussion.
In response to Ma's view that the KMT will be spurned and rejected by the public if it were to support yet another amend to the Constitution, Wang said that such a discussion falls within the remit of the legislature, which has a constitutional right and duty to discuss such amendments. Nor did he agree with the party leadership threatening supporters of the amendment with disciplinary measures and rhetorically asked whether the issue was really that serious. Clearly, the issue of constitutional amendment has become a catalyst for conflict within the KMT.
The fact cannot be ignored that those who favor constitutional amendments are well-prepared. Could Lien and Wang become leaders of the faction favoring constitutional amendment and confront those who -- led by Ma -- oppose it? This is not only a constitutional issue but it is also part of the KMT's internal power struggle. It offers Lien and Wang an issue on which to build their strength, and which will test Ma's power within the KMT's legislative caucus.
Regardless of whether the constitutional amendments are passed, the KMT's mainstream and opposing forces are gathering strength. This begs the question: Will this affect the year-end Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral elections, the 2007 legislative elections and the 2008 presidential election. Will it will lead to another KMT split? Let's wait and see.
Chin Heng-wei is the editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.
Translated by Daniel Cheng
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
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this