After the 2004 presidential election, the mission of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) was crystal clear: to retake power.
Their strategies were obvious: to create social unrest by protesting repeatedly on the streets and on the legislative floor, to confuse the public by spreading unconfirmed rumors through the media on matters related to the administration of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), and to undermine the confidence of the Taiwanese people.
The pan-blue strategy has worked, and a great number of Taiwanese people have lost their confidence in the nation. Indeed, it could be said that the KMT and PFP are halfway to fulfilling their mission.
The recent call for Chen's resignation by pro-green academics is a stark reminder of just how far the pan-blues have come.
Why are the pan-green academics doing this?
It could be the Stockholm Syndrome effect.
After being governed by outsiders for more than 100 years -- 55 years by the Japanese and 50 years by the Chinese -- Taiwanese people still do not know how to deal with the freedom and democracy that they have fought so hard for.
It is extremely disappointing that the cream of Taiwanese society should fall for this.
Ken Huang
Murrieta, California
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,
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
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has formally announced his intention to stand for permanent party chairman. He has decided that he is the right person to steer the fledgling third force in Taiwan’s politics through the challenges it would certainly face in the post-Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) era, rather than serve in a caretaker role while the party finds a more suitable candidate. Huang is sure to secure the position. He is almost certainly not the right man for the job. Ko not only founded the party, he forged it into a one-man political force, with himself
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