Citing press reports, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) News Network reported on Thursday that KMT Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀), a deputy caucus whip, asked President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration how it would handle the question of the “downgrading” or “declassification” of documents related to the “state affairs fund,” which has hovered over former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his close circle for more than a year.
A decision on whether to open the classified files has yet to be made, but pressure from within the KMT has been growing and some may even see it as a fait accompli, given the second half of Chang’s question, which pointed to the difficulty KMT legislators appearing on TV talk shows would have explaining the move.
While the reports quoted Ma as saying that the Cabinet was considering the matter and that a president must obey the law, he also added: “I have heard the voices of the public.”
Ma, facing dilemmas over the legality of opening up his predecessor’s classified memorandums and heat from within his party to press on with the witch hunt and get their nemesis, could yet make another non-decision and claim that “the public” — meaning KMT supporters, as interpreted by the party — wanted it, even if this meant breaking the laws regulating the handling of classified information.
Tampering with “state affairs” documentation carries no small number of problems. Chief among them is the fact that such documents may contain information that, if obtained by another state, could be detrimental to national security. As such, if it is not handled properly, leaked or passed on by a KMT official on friendly terms with, say, Beijing, national interests could be compromised.
Another danger with declassification is not knowing where to stop. Once the green light has been obtained to dig for dirt — and especially when that permission was given as part of a political witch hunt — investigators will be tempted to turn to the next page and take a peek at material that, for one reason or another, had better be left alone.
Once such a precedent has been created, there would be nothing to prevent other KMT legislators from calling for the “downgrading” or “declassification” of other documentation. Left unchecked, we could soon find ourselves with years of secret presidential diplomacy spilled out on the floor for the world to see.
Far too often, heads of state and government agencies have used classification to cover up ugly dealings or unseemly mistakes.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that certain things ought not to remain classified, especially when a state lives in the shadow of diplomatic isolation and military invasion.
Declassification, should it come to that, must be conducted with the greatest care, for apolitical reasons, by neutral professionals with proper skills and the appropriate checks and balances, to ensure that no disproportionate harm is done to the nation once secrets have come to light. Sadly, based on its bloodthirsty approach to indictments, KMT officials do not meet those criteria.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) is expected to be summoned by the Taipei City Police Department after a rally in Taipei on Saturday last week resulted in injuries to eight police officers. The Ministry of the Interior on Sunday said that police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by an estimated 1,000 “disorderly” demonstrators. The rally — led by Huang to mark one year since a raid by Taipei prosecutors on then-TPP chairman and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — might have contravened the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), as the organizers had
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
RSS