US Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau Biden passed away in May as a result of brain cancer. Before he drew his last breath, Beau Biden asked his father to seize the chance to run for president. Joe Biden did consider the prospect, but eventually announced his decision not to enter the race on the grounds that there was not enough time to prepare for the campaign.
Biden did not play the sympathy card, trying to capitalize on his son’s last words. Neither did he use the excuse of his wife’s reluctance for him to run when he announced his decision not to enter the race. Nor did he change the rule of the game to get rid of potential Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton by claiming that the party, or the nation, needs him, and only him. He chose to uphold the principles of democratic procedures and fair competition, on which he based his decision not to enter the race.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) did just the opposite. He forcefully removed former KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) so that he could run for president.
After knowing that Chu might let him run for legislator-at-large (不分區立委), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who did not get to run for president, but was willing to settle for second best, rushed to give Chu his generous support by saying that Chu is an outstanding candidate because Chu had studied in the US.
Chu is one of the elite and an heir to the throne, so to speak, in the KMT. He is on a totally different level from those who thrive on dirty money politics.
Yes, he received his doctorate in the US, but then so did President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and we all know how Ma’s brain is filled with party-state ideology and the struggle for power through any means necessary that is typical of a Leninist structure.
To accentuate the sacrifices he made for the party and the nation, Chu let it be known that his decision to run for president was opposed by his family. Chu said he even told his wife, the daughter of former Taiwan Provincial Assembly speaker Kao Yu-jen (高育仁), to marry someone else in her next life.
On top of that, Chu said that he and his wife gave each other the silent treatment for a period of time because of his decision to run for president. Those nonsensical words, which are hardly romantic, are nothing but a pre-emptive measure to prevent public scrutiny of the interests of the Kao family.
Chu, who is about to visit the US, is not a complete nobody in the US’ records. Thanks to leaked cables, he is shown to be a person with no sense of democracy and a great gossip who revealed the internal strife within the KMT.
Chu used the excuse that Hung’s cross-strait policy ran against mainstream public opinion to dethrone her, but his so-called “1992 consensus” and “two sides of Taiwan Strait belong to one China” are similarly at odds with mainstream public opinion.
Former American Institute in Taiwan director Stephen Young once reminded Chu that any agreement between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China must be reached based on the Taiwanese public’s “free will.”
However, how can the KMT’s little prince bother to care about the public’s free will? How can he understand checks and balances? The “1992 consensus” is not a consensus in Taiwan, but he claimed that it is the consensus Taiwan shares with China. It makes you wonder whether the man lives in a parallel universe.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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