In his article “Running for president, for what?” (Liberty Times, March 5, section A6), Lee Min-yung (李敏勇) said: “If we cannot break away from the dilemma posed by the “Republic of China,” then running for president amounts to little more than playing power games to accumulate personal fame or wealth... Future candidates for the presidency need to tell the people how they plan to lead Taiwan in the building of a new community with the real structure of a nation.”
I believe that the most important mission for any future president is to ensure Taiwanese establish a new and independent state based on freedom, democracy, justice and liberty.
Dr Shigeru Oda, a justice at the International Court for 27 years, demonstrated his affection for Taiwan in his book Witnessing One Hundred Years of Taiwan (the Japanese-language edition was published in 2002, the Chinese-language edition in 2009). In a note added to the Taiwan edition of the book last year, Oda said in the last paragraph:
“In the mid-1990s, when I was still an international judicial magistrate at the Hague International Court of Justice, I was visited by Ma Ying-Jeou (馬英九) who had only recently resigned his post as minister of justice, in his capacity as an international law associate professor from National Chengchi University in Taiwan. To this day I still remember the passion he displayed when talking about ‘New Taiwanese’ and ‘Taiwan belonging to Taiwanese.’ Naturally, after he became president I was full of expectation that he would strive to ensure that the dreams of 23 million Taiwanese would now come true.”
However, Ma forgot what he said to Oda and as a result expectations that Taiwan might become an independent state any time soon are unrealistic.
Faced with this dilemma, Taiwanese need to understand the basic principles of international law. In order to ensure “Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese,” and establish a new and independent country, we need to use people power combined with international pressure. Only then can we break from the “ROC-in-exile” framework by which Taiwan is governed.
Whoever runs for the president of Taiwan needs to articulate how such a goal is to be achieved if he or she is to lead the Taiwanese in establishing a country of their own.
YANG LIU HSIU-HWA
Taipei
Source: Taipei Times - Letter 2011/03/16
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