There are those within the pan-green camp who are willing to give the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) the benefit of the doubt and who refuse to buy into the belief that it is bent on selling out Taiwan to China. However, every now and then the Ma government does things that make it very difficult to remain patient with it.
The latest incident involves the return to Taiwan, after 17 years in exile, of former Bamboo Union leader Chang An-le (張安樂) on Saturday. After checking through immigration, the most-wanted criminal emerged from the airport, handcuffed and escorted by police, smirking like a conqueror.
By some inexplicable agreement or oversight, Chang — also known as the “White Wolf” — was hiding his handcuffs with a pamphlet advocating his plans for the “peaceful reunification” of Taiwan and China.
Awaiting him at the airport were hundreds of thugs and the racist invertebrate Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), who surely found more reason to celebrate after Chang was released on bail later the same day.
Based on those events, it seems it is acceptable for police to rough up and deny the rights of peaceful protesters in Miaoli, or for the security apparatus to monitor and harass student leaders such as Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), but when it comes to a gangster who played a role in the 1984 murder of Henry Liu (劉宜良), a journalist in California, the justice system treats him with utmost deference.
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), jailed for corruption, was denied bail and medical parole because he purportedly constituted a flight risk, but Chang was a free man within hours, free to visit a temple the very next day and to generate more publicity for his political machinations.
It is said that Chang, who obtained two degrees while serving a 15-year jail sentence in the US on drug charges, may be the most educated of Taiwan’s gangsters, but the policies of his Unionist Party, which he founded while in China, confirm that he has not learned a thing about democracy and Taiwan.
What he advocates appeals to less than 10 percent of the overall population and he does so at a time when China under President Xi Jinping (習近平) is showing every indication that it is shifting toward a more Maoist line — the very opposite of developments that could encourage more Taiwanese to consider, at some point, some form of political settlement across the Taiwan Strait.
More likely, Chang’s return means that intimidation, if not violence, will play a greater role in politics.
We had a brief preview of the shape of things to come in 2009 when the disgraced Kuo had to be pulled back to Taiwan after it was discovered that he had used his position at the representative office in Toronto to publish hateful tracts under a pseudonym. It was Chang’s goons who turned up en masse at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to protect and whisk him away, whereupon he embarked on his own, behind-the-scenes efforts to foster unification with China.
Meanwhile, commenting on Saturday’s debacle, all that Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) could muster was the promise that the government would do better in future, which can only lead us to wonder whether the Ma administration is preparing to welcome other delinquents and miscreants back to the country.
What a bloody disgrace.
How much longer are we willing to listen to the platitudes of government officials who constantly promise to do better in future?
Heads need to roll on this one and every effort should be made to ensure that criminals such as Chang — who in fact could very well be regarded as a foreign agent by now — are locked away in a damp cell for a long time.
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
The Legislative Yuan on Friday held another cross-party caucus negotiation on a special act for bolstering national defense that the Executive Yuan had proposed last year. The party caucuses failed to reach a consensus on several key provisions, so the next session is scheduled for today, where many believe substantial progress would finally be made. The plan for an eight-year NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.59 billion) special defense budget was first proposed by the Cabinet in November last year, but the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers have continuously blocked it from being listed on the agenda for
On Tuesday last week, the Presidential Office announced, less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to depart, that President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned official trip to Eswatini, Taiwan’s sole diplomatic ally in Africa, had been delayed. It said that the three island nations of Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar had, without prior notice, revoked the charter plane’s overflight permits following “intense pressure” from China. Lai, in his capacity as the Republic of China’s (ROC) president, was to attend the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession. King Mswati visited Taiwan to attend Lai’s inauguration in 2024. This is the first
RSS