When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Chu (
The KMT's reaction simply proves once again that the party has absolutely no respect whatsoever for the nation's democracy.
A clear pattern has developed in recent years, with the party protesting the result of any important election it loses.
It began with the 2000 presidential election. When the KMT received a thumping following James Soong's (
The trend continued with weeks of protests following the KMT's narrow presidential defeat in 2004, when the election-eve shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (
To that list add Kaohsiung 2006.
Maybe this is why the pan-blue camp has come to be known as the "refuse to lose crowd" by certain sections of the US diplomatic community, including former American Institute in Taiwan chairwoman Therese Shaheen, who wrote about it in a Wall Street Journal article on Nov. 8.
When was the last time a KMT figure stood up and accepted defeat graciously or even lauded Taiwan's democratic achievements?
The party's total disdain for democracy can be seen in the way it has systematically undermined the leadership of its popularly elected chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
And the KMT's decision to establish a working relationship with the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party further demonstrates its contempt for the nation's democratic system.
It was former president and KMT chairman Lee Teng-hui (
Certain sections of the party's old guard are so unwilling to accept defeat that they would happily bring back one-party authoritarian rule tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it.
The KMT's strategy of trying to make Saturday's elections a plebiscite on the integrity of its chairman and the president failed. For whatever reasons, voters showed that politicians getting their fingers caught in the cash register wasn't enough for them to change their political affiliation.
So instead of blaming their Kaohsiung defeat on faulty ballot-counting and vote-buying accusations, the KMT should start looking at the reasons why the majority of voters in the south continue to reject them.
The KMT needs to put two and two together and work out why the popularity it enjoyed during the Lee era has vanished.
But it won't.
The party's troubles stem from arrogance, an inability to believe it is wrong and a reluctance to examine unpopular policy platforms and revise them accordingly -- all of which are critical to democratic success.
Only when it does this will it be able to stop calling into question the integrity of the nation's democratic institutions and instead make them work in the party's favor.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS