This week the confrontation between Lee Teng-hui (
There have of course been the usual "senior party members" speaking anonymously suggesting that Lee is senile. His rabble-rousing performances on the stump give the lie to that. But not all KMT criticism is easily dismissed. For example, one of the most telling parts of Ting's open letter was his pointing out that Lee had vilified Huang Chu-wen's (
The KMT has many powerful weapons in its armory to aim at Lee. These include its relations with the media -- which for the most part remains in the KMT conservative camp -- and the business world, starving Lee and those he supports of funds. But by far the most effective weapon in the KMT camp is the question of why Lee has changed his tune so radically in the past year.
Some have suggested that it is because he has been personally angered by the KMT's refusal to pursue the Chung Hsing Bills Finance case against James Soong (
Let us be quite clear here. This paper is broadly supportive of Lee's aims and believes that the KMT's dalliance with the Chinese Communists is a clear and present danger to Taiwan. So we do not ask these questions of Lee rhetorically, to show up inconsistencies in his position. We ask them because they are there, and for Lee's campaigning with the TSU to pack the necessary punch to destroy the Pan-blue (or is it red?) camp on Dec. 1, they need to be answered. Getting on a stage and calling the KMT "bastards" as he did last week is very amusing. But it does not answer the questions about the contradictions in his own position that weaken his cause. Such answers are needed and time is running out.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
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