Former president Lee Teng-hui (
Addressing a forum held by the think tank Taiwan Advocates to promote the creation of a new constitution, Lee said that the people of Taiwan need to shrug off the mentality of being a "long-term laborer" after being ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for half a century, and take up the responsibility of being the master of their own country.
Lee told a large group of supporters that the biggest problem with the current ROC Constitution was that it had been created in China and was not designed to fit the needs of Taiwan.
"Although Taiwan has experienced many democratic transitions in the past decade and the referendum concept has become part of mainstream public opinion, Taiwanese still need to strengthen their determination to be the host in their own country.
"Therefore, we have to stand up bravely to make rational and practical plans to create our own constitution and express our own opinions to decide this country's policies through the referendum. We will no longer be manipulated by those opposing voices telling us to give up our own rights," Lee said.
Lee also accused the opposition camp, led by the KMT and its splinter group, the People First Party, of obstructing the democratic initiatives in Taiwan, which he said were a result of the former authoritarian rulers' disdain for the Taiwanese people and their skepticism that Taiwanese can rule their own country.
He said that the pan-blue alliance's opposition to Taiwan's first referendum reflected its long-term aversion to further democratization. Lee said this was also reflected in their resistance to public presidential elections in 1994.
Singling out Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who opposed the direct presidential election in 1994 and is now one of the strongest opponents of the government's referendum proposition, Lee said the blue camp's opposition to the referendum was a repetition of their behavior in 1994, when they insisted that the president be elected through a representative system, rather than by the people.
Lee said that Taiwan faces four major problems: the national identity issue; an incomplete nation, which could be corrected by rewriting the Constitution; the increasing interactions brought about by cross-Strait economic activities, which, if not handled properly, could drag down Taiwan's competitiveness; and the security issue across the Taiwan Strait.
He said the people of Taiwan needed to use their own wisdom to ensure that their right to govern themselves is not undermined by foreign influences and domestic opposition.
Lee said the US and France's opposition to Taiwan's referendum served only their own interests, in addition to being a sell-out of democracy.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift