President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) needs to stop apologizing for the corruption scandals involving close aides and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians. He should also stop talking about how shocked and saddened he was to learn about the bribery allegations against them. We’ve heard it all before.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Lai Su-ju (賴素如) allegedly accepted NT$1 million (US$33,490) in bribes from the developer of Taipei Twin Towers project — a scandal that erupted just months after a corruption scandal involving former Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世). Both occured on Ma’s watch, and, as he said in an apology on Thursday regarding the Lai scandal, he should take full responsibility for KMT members’ acts of corruption.
Both Lin and Lai were trusted aides as a top official of the Executive Yuan and director of Ma’s chairman’s office respectively. The KMT had promoted them as fresh faces and young hopefuls under Ma’s chairmanship.
Their fall from grace have highlighted the problem of the KMT’s power structure. Under the party-state mechanism, Ma holds absolute power and only takes advice from a small circle of aides.
His reluctance to be more engaged in grassroots politics and to have a deeper understanding of the party’s local factions has made it easier for politicians like Lin and Lai to abuse their power and allegedly pocket bribes.
Ma has pledged to speed up party reform and eliminate the so-called “black gold” or vote-buying culture in the KMT since his first stint as party chairman in 2005. His promise once gave the public high hopes that the 100-year-old party could be cleaned up.
Now his aides alleged involvement in bribery scandals has destroyed the public’s confidence in the integrity of the Ma administration.
While the KMT scrambles to deal with the crises, Ma is still planning to run for re-election as KMT chairman in July, despite growing challenges from party members.
He has said that only by his doubling as KMT chairman can the administrative and legislative branches work closely in implementing policies. However, despite Ma’s chairmanship, the Cabinet still has trouble getting the KMT legisative caucus to carry out government reforms and has failed to improve efficiency.
The problems of illicit party assets, black-gold politics and factional infighting has also clouded the party over the years.
Cleaning up the party’s stolen assets and making the party “asset free” was a major goal of Ma for improving the party’s image. Most of the problematic assets have been handled, but the party is unable to sell the Central Investment Holding Co, which is valued at more than NT$20 billion.
However, the KMT’s old practice of relying on vote-buying and influence peddling among local factions continues to occur in elections.
Anti-corruption reform efforts in the KMT are a daunting task that require collective and persistent efforts. Ma must expand his small circle of aides and seek help from outside this pool of talent if he is to uphold party integrity. Transforming the KMT into a clean party is not something he can accomplish alone.
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an American strategy to deny China that objective would complicate Beijing’s calculus and deter large-scale hostilities. For decades, China has cautioned “independence means war.” The opposite is also true: “war means independence.” A comprehensive strategy of denial would guarantee an outcome of de jure independence for Taiwan in the event of Chinese invasion or
A recent Taipei Times editorial (“A targeted bilingual policy,” March 12, page 8) questioned how the Ministry of Education can justify spending NT$151 million (US$4.74 million) when the spotlighted achievements are English speech competitions and campus tours. It is a fair question, but it focuses on the wrong issue. The problem is not last year’s outcomes failing to meet the bilingual education vision; the issue is that the ministry has abandoned the program that originally justified such a large expenditure. In the early years of Bilingual 2030, the ministry’s K-12 Administration promoted the Bilingual Instruction in Select Domains Program (部分領域課程雙語教學實施計畫).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said it is necessary for her to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and it would be a “huge boost” to the party’s local election results in November, but many KMT members have expressed different opinions, indicating a struggle between different groups in the party. Since Cheng was elected as party chairwoman in October last year, she has repeatedly expressed support for increased exchanges with China, saying that it would bring peace and prosperity to Taiwan, and that a meeting with Xi in Beijing takes priority over meeting
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman for maritime affairs Rogelio Villanueva on Monday said that Manila’s claims in the South China Sea are backed by international law. Villanueva was responding to a social media post by the Chinese embassy alleging that a former Philippine ambassador in 1990 had written a letter to a German radio operator stating that the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) did not fall within Manila’s territory. “Sovereignty is not merely claimed, it is exercised,” Villanueva said. The Philippines won a landmark case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that found China’s sweeping claim of sovereignty in
RSS