Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Prison stops Chen Shui-bian from publishing article

Taipei Times

Prison officials are preventing a magazine column written by former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) from going to print, his son, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), said yesterday.

Greater Kaohsiung Councilor Chen Chih-chung said after visiting his father in Taipei Prison yesterday that prison officials had requested the column be revised a second time, after Chen Shui-bian complied with an earlier request.

As a result, it is unlikely that the article, for which the former president is understood to have been paid close to NT$20,000, will make it into tomorrow’s edition of Next Magazine, he said.

Tsai reaffirms willingness to hold talks with Beijing

Taipei Times

Seeking to assuage apprehensions about the future of cross-strait relations, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday reaffirmed her party’s willingness to hold talks with Beijing.

Concluding a three-day visit to the Philippines, Tsai made the remarks during a breakfast meeting with reporters.

The DPP, she said, was willing to sit down with China to discuss proposals for building a “feasible and viable” interaction framework between the two sides, adding that the talks would not come at the expense of the DPP’s political values and principles.

Seeing through China’s strategy

Liberty Times Editorial

It recently came to light that a retired general from Taiwan’s armed forces said during a visit to China that there should no longer be any need to talk of a Nationalist army and a Communist army, because “we are all Chinese armies.” His comment stirred up a hornet’s nest in Taiwan and has been denounced by supporters of the pan-blue and pan-green camps alike, while ordinary people resent the fact that retirees whose pensions are paid out of our taxes should go around talking like traitors.

From China’s point of view, no matter what happens next, the general’s pronouncement was a mark of success for its united-front strategy aimed at eventual unification. For Taiwan, on the other hand, it comes as yet another blow to the morale of its armed forces and the public at large. The incident also shows that there are some people who are quite aware that China’s every move is aimed at unification, yet still gather like moths around a candle, only to get burned when they fly too close.

Judicial reforms concern everyone

Jerome Keating

Taiwan still carries a lot of baggage from its past one-party state days under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). One particularly large piece of that baggage has been the nation’s need for judicial reform. This need had been long evident, but it could only begin to be met after martial law was lifted in 1987.

Nonetheless, efforts to address this issue with appropriate legislation had long proven futile. Finally, however, in the latest legislative session, a bill called the Judges’ Act (法官法) was passed. What has spurred on this change? There have been several forces at work; one has certainly been and continues to be public awareness of the problem.

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