People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
Casting aside a presidential system in favor of a parliamentary system is now seen by Soong as an opportunity to gain advantage because he believes that the pan-blue superiority in the legislature will allow him to turn defeat into victory.
Is Soong trying to pull a fast one by favoring a parliamentary system? This is the first question.
Putting aside the interminable debate over which system is superior -- will adopting a parliamentary system in fact give an advantage to the pan-blues? This is the second question.
Media reports have suggested that Soong has realized that in the last three direct presidential elections, which have all been winner-takes-all, candidates have been pushed to rash actions in their desperation to win, a problem exacerbated by the lack of judicial and media impartiality. He has described the phenomenon as "Latin Americanization." To counter this, he believes that the only way to resolve the ethnic question and create a stable and peaceful political environment is to adopt a parliamentary system.
This argument is totally incoherent. He has mixed up different issues.
Is this due to a weak intellect or is it the result of focusing on political maneuvering to the exclusion of any proper analysis of the two systems?
In fact, it seems that Soong's only real consideration is expressed in the idea of winner-takes-all. This is because the winner has not been the pan-blues; it is the pan-greens who have taken it all. As a result, the only option left to Soong is to change the rules of the game.
From this it's obvious that the pan-blues have lost all hope of an election victory, and in future elections, the pan-blues will have less and less support, until eventually they have none at all.
Will the pan-blues have an opportunity to revive their fortunes if a parliamentary system is introduced? Or are they overestimating themselves and underestimating their opponents?
In this year's presidential election, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and PFP believed that by working together they could achieve a "second transfer of power." This turned out to be little more than a pipe dream.
The will of the people is not the property of any one party and cannot be held hostage. The 60 percent of the vote obtained by Soong and KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) in the 2000 elections is not their property, and their belief that "one plus one is greater than two" is pure myth.
Having said this, even if a parliamentary system is adopted, the pan-blues might not be able to get rid of their opposition status. The point is the will of the people; it has nothing to do with the system.
Chin Heng-wei is editor in chief of Contemporary Monthly.
TRANSLATED BY Ian Bartholomew
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
RSS