Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Taiwan has many problems, not only with its economy but even with its democracy and identity. In the past two years Taiwan's economy has gone nowhere but down under President Ma Ying-jeou; his 6-3-3 promise is at best a country wide joke. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) from its one-party state days up to the present still controls the Legislative Yuan. For this reason it maintains tremendous leverage, and its possession of the stolen state assets can go unchallenged. Thus, the KMT can continue to place party interests before Taiwan's national interests. Or put another way, the KMT only protects Taiwan's interests if they protect the KMT interests. This is the root of Taiwan's problems and what Taiwanese still have not yet grasped. The KMT is a carpetbagger party that exists to serve its carpetbagger interests and preserve the Constitutional fantasy that perpetuates its carpetbagger rights.

The rubber-stamp passage by the Legislative Yuan of the "Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China will not end the controversy over the pact.

President Ma Ying-jeou and senior officials of his rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government have succeeded in making the disputed pact an accomplished fact despite sharp criticism and street and legislative protests by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party and a wide range of labor, environmental, consumer and civic groups over its potential negative impacts on agriculture, traditional or domestic-market oriented industries, domestic employment and wages, democratic transparency and accountability and Taiwan's economic and political autonomy.