On Monday, the government ordered several thousand police officers to forcibly remove the protesters occupying the Executive Yuan building. Scores of people were injured. History will remember this as the time Taiwan’s democracy, at the hands of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), regressed. Men such as Ma and his premier, Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), will be remembered as leaders willing to use force on their own people.
The protesters in the legislative chamber, who had been waiting for a response from Ma for five days, were bitterly disappointed by the press conference he gave. Physically and mentally exhausted, with nothing to show for their action, divisions began to appear among them. Those wanting to escalate the standoff invaded the Executive Yuan, placing even more pressure on the government to respond. However, they misread the situation, overestimated their own power and underestimated the government’s ruthlessness in putting an end to the movement. The invasion of the highest branch of government crossed Ma’s red line. The protesters were no longer protected by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng’s (王金平) tolerance or Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, and Ma and Jiang gave the order to bring in riot police and water cannons, leading to unfortunate scenes.
The Ma administration cannot absolve itself of the shameful way these protests have ended. They were sparked by the non-transparent way in which the government handled the cross-strait service trade agreement. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) violated an understanding it had with the opposition. Its clumsy handling of the affair caused anger among students and the general public, leading to the occupation of the legislative chamber.
The administration showed arrogance in dealing with the protest. Ma has been unwilling to engage with the opposition and failed, during the six days of the occupation of the legislative chamber, to send a representative to listen to the students’ grievances and seek a way to bring the affair to a peaceful conclusion. Jiang did go to the legislature, but left after a few minutes in a fit of petulance.
Instead, Ma conspired to capitalize on the situation and bring Wang, his political rival, into the fray, calling him for a meeting by invoking Article 44 of the Constitution, which allows the president to summon leaders of the various branches of government to address inter-branch disputes. His plan was to pass the responsibility for dealing with the protests to Wang. However, Wang declined to attend, saying it was an internal matter for the legislative branch.
There was no need for these protests to produce such regrettable circumstances. Had Ma been more willing to communicate, to open negotiation channels and listen to the students’ concerns over the service trade agreement and their own futures; if he had agreed to conduct the promised clause-by-clause review, reopening negotiations with Beijing on the agreement’s contentious parts, things may well have developed in a more agreeable, civilized manner.
However, he was reluctant to make even the slightest concession, afraid that to do so would be seen as a sign of weakness by China. Desperate to cling to power, he held firm, indifferent to whether it made an enemy of the public. The forced expulsion of protesters from the Executive Yuan complex was a temporary victory because they have returned to the premises. The stench of blood and bile on the streets is permeating the entire country; media reports have galvanized more students and more groups to take action. Taipei will have to keep a strong police presence not only around the Executive Yuan, but also around the Presidential Office. Revolution is in the air.
For what is left of his term, Ma will be plagued wherever he goes with protests. It will be a nightmare for him and it will be because of his incompetence.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion. In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality. The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective
RSS