When the number of legislative seats is halved in the legislative elections in January, the 34 legislators-at-large will make up 30 percent of the legislature's 113 seats. Selecting nominees for legislator-at-large is no longer simply a matter of internal party affairs as local development needs and structural balance must also be considered.
The single-member district system puts a strong emphasis on the welfare of electoral districts, which means that the next legislature's approach to local public affairs will be ruled to a large extent by pork barrel politics, assisted by the legislators-at-large.
There are only four nominees from the area south of Yunlin County on the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) legislators-at-large safe list. Of these, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
If the list had been determined democratically, then outsiders would have had to respect the will of the majority. But the list was determined behind closed doors, and it clearly sacrificed professional image and expertise in the interest of settling electoral district disputes.
In the end, the ranking of the KMT's legislators-at-large clearly gives priority to northern candidates. Perhaps the KMT still sees the south as an inconsequential hinterland. Might that explain why Legislator Steve Chan (詹啟賢) of Tainan was not included on the list?
The KMT is already preparing itself for the worst-case scenario in the elections in the south, so as a national party, it would only be reasonable for it to strive to achieve a balance of regional interests through its legislators-at-large -- the exact opposite of the party's strategy. When it came to the distribution of power within the party, southern Taiwan was the first to be sacrificed.
The result will be that the KMT will be known for its northern bias.
As an elected representative from the south, I do not judge the list from a simple pan-blue or pan-green perspective.
After the number of seats is reduced by half, I think that the influence of legislators-at-large will become increasingly apparent, and parties must then consider the legislative power structure based on potential regional conflicts.
If the poll results go according to the KMT's plan, the pan-blue camp will continue to enjoy an advantage in the legislature. For southern Taiwan, this will result in less access to resources and development opportunities.
Can KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou's (
Would distributing a greater proportion of legislators-at-large among southern candidates help to balance the inequality between urban and rural areas? The answer inclines toward the affirmative.
Despite this, the KMT has sacrificed the latter for the former in the belief that they can win votes simply by dabbling a little in the south.
Do they really take us southerners for elderly, uneducated country bumpkins?
Chiu Li-li is a Tainan City councilor.
Translated by Perry Svensson and Angela Hong
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,
RSS