Taiwan’s political system was described at a Washington conference on Tuesday as a sort of “liquid muck.”
Former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan Richard Bush used the analogy as he described President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) ongoing problems.
Bush said that he had been searching for an image to capture the nature of the nation’s political system.
“The one that comes to mind is quicksand,” he said.
Now director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, Bush was a member of a panel at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that was analyzing Ma’s videoconference to the US earlier in the week.
“Many of us will remember, from watching Western movies and serials, the episodes where the hero is dragged down by this liquid muck,” he said.
Unless something happens, Bush said, the hero is pulled under and asphyxiated.
“Taiwan’s political system is a lot like that, or at least its relationship with its president is a lot like that,” Bush said.
He said there were pressures on the president coming from every direction — the president’s own party, the opposition party, the legislature and incessant media coverage.
“It is hard to maintain focus, to maintain direction and strategy,” Bush said.
This was why, he said, the videoconference was “very important.”
He said that Ma’s speech acted as a reminder to the president and to his constituency about “where we were, where we intend to go and how we are doing.”
Bush admitted that his analogy was derogatory and went on to praise Taiwan’s democracy as a “stabilizing force.”
He said it acted as a break on initiatives that “suggest independence” and also as a break on “mindless and rapid movement” toward unification with China.
He said that the nation’s democracy set the boundaries within which any Taiwanese leader must work.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do