The TSU's first anniversary celebration on Sunday provided an occasion for President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen and Lee both have radars in their minds watching over Taiwan's status -- radars that help the nation find its way when it gets lost. At the TSU celebration, Lee threw his support behind Chen's "one country on each side" speech, while Chen insisted that Taiwan must "continue on the right path." When president, Lee redefined cross-strait relations as "special state-to-state" in nature. Chen has said there is "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait. Despite Beijing's fury, both "state-to-state" and "one country on each side" have the support of the majority of people of Taiwan -- proof that their platforms reflect public opinion and are the basis for leadership in Taiwan.
Lee's goal of putting together a "85 + 35" majority alliance in the Legislative Yuan in last December's elections did not come true because the TSU only won 13 seats and the DPP 87. However, those 13 TSU legislators are like the 13 "additional" legislators during the "tangwai" era -- they have become the most aggressive lawmakers in the legislature and their party has taken a leading role in shaping political debate. The TSU says what the DPP cannot and does what the ruling party cannot.
Over the past year, the TSU has become a constructive competitor of the DPP and helped keep the ruling party on track. The two parties have considerable potential for growth and can work together to further open up the political scene. Theirs is a competitive relationship , but the TSU occupies the left end of the DPP's pro-independence spectrum, pushing the ruling party toward middle ground and creating a division of labor between them.
This is a stark contrast to the opposition alliance, which rests solely on a shared opposition to Chen and Lee. Both the KMT and the PFP are competing for a shrinking voter base as they seek to appease Beijing. The pan-blue camp pays lip service to cooperation -- in the legislature and on the campaign trail -- but the KMT and the PFP vie for supremacy. KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Taiwan's political arena is going through a transitional period. The country may move toward a more stable bipartisan structure consisting of the pan-blue and pan-green camps, or it may split into a multi-party environment. The cooperative relationship between the DPP and the TSU is a positive factor in Taiwan's political development. It is also an important foundation for a future stable legislative majority. Such relations are therefore an important political asset that all Taiwanese should value.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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