President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has performed poorly during his time in office; his campaign slogan “total government, total responsibility” is nothing but empty words. Ma is a true politician. He excels in taking credit for things that go right and passing the buck when they go wrong.
Ma exploits former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) for his own political benefit, using him to foment ethnic tensions through Chen’s continued imprisonment. As a result, non-violent democratic reforms have been tainted by confrontation between the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and opposition camps. Although Ma named the plaza at Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building the “democratic plaza against corruption,” it should have been called the “corruption plaza against democracy.” What an embarrassment.
Ma has placed his hopes in China, his great benefactor, depending on Beijing, while putting Taiwan’s sovereignty at risk. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to bully the Republic of China (ROC). On Monday, China’s Global Times even mocked Ma as a “local government head” after he expressed support for the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
With the nine-in-one elections approaching, now is a good time for voters to scrutinize Ma’s political record. Some say that the nation cannot make progress until the KMT collapses.
The KMT nominated former Kaohsiung County commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興), who left the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and National University of Tainan president Huang Hsiu-shuang (黃秀霜) for the Kaohsiung and Tainan mayoral elections respectively.
However, their support ratings are significantly lower than those of the DPP’s Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) and Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德), who are both running for re-election.
In Greater Taichung, DPP mayoral candidate Lin Chia-lung’s (林佳龍) support ratings are also much higher than those of the KMT’s Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), who is running for re-election.
As for Taipei City, independent mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is an “atypical” candidate, having formed a “grand opposition coalition,” and has a high degree of support among younger voters and women. He has surpassed the blue and green camps on the political map, with higher support ratings than the KMT’s mayoral candidate, Sean Lien (連戰), who has been abandoned by some KMT members.
However, some KMT politicians have attempted to create friction between the blue and green camps to help Lien by stirring up the party’s supporters. Even the KMT’s Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), after being repeatedly insulted by Ma, recently said that Lien is likely to win the Taipei mayoral election. Is he serious?
In order to save the KMT, the nation should let the party fail, so it can wake up and understand the true meaning of democracy. Voters should terminate KMT rule so a new nation can be born. Then, as the ROC transforms into a new nation named Taiwan, it can end the PRC’s ambition to annex the ROC.
If the KMT suffers a major defeat in the elections, the party would have to review itself before the 2016 presidential and legislative elections. This might change the evil KMT regime, and the fake nation named the ROC.
The recent food safety scandals reflect the poor health of the nation’s politics. To address the problem from the roots, the KMT should be removed from power. The public must distinguish between right and wrong, and in doing so, it can make progress toward a promising new nation.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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
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
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS