Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The Ma Government Continues to Try to Return Taiwan to the One-party State Days of the KMT

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

In big and small ways, the government of Ma Ying-jeou is trying to squelch any and all opposite and critical thought. It seems they wish to return to their old one-party state days where they tried to control the thinking of the people. The latest development is in the simple matter of the tour guides at the Presidential Palace.

At set times during the week, Taiwan's Presidential Palace is open to the public for free tours. The people conducting these tours are volunteers; they give of their time because they want to be involved in some ways in serving the country. However, many of them after years of service are all of a sudden finding that they are being canned. Canned? Yes, that's right, they are canned not because they are putting their hand in the till or stealing; they are being canned because that even in tours of the Presidential Palace they are not giving the public the official Ma-speak.

Protest against Red Cross takes a ‘political’ turn

Taipei Times

The unilateral cancelation by the social networking Web site Facebook of an online petition protesting against the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China’s (ROC) handling of donations for Japanese earthquake victims has sparked accusations of “political manipulation” among Internet users

“I feel like someone’s keeping an eye on me, I feel afraid and I feel angry at the same time,” netizen Subing (酥餅), who created the online petition with another netizen, Miawko (妙子), on Facebook, wrote on his personal blog.

China intent on taking over Taiwan: US expert

Taipei Times

A new analysis of China’s latest defense white paper concludes that it is part and parcel of Beijing’s “political warfare against Taiwan.”

The analysis by Richard Fisher, a senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the white paper “provides a disturbing insight into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy of coercive envelopment of Taiwan.”

Fisher said the paper was “a stark reminder of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] ongoing strategy of economic and political ‘united front’ warfare combined with military intimidation, which the PRC could decide to change into a direct military campaign at any point in the future.”

Rule of law or rule by law?

Taipei Times Editorial

Facing another round of criticism by academics over the weekend about fears of abuse of power, the Presidential Office again responded by maintaining that Taiwan was a country of law and order, and that the authorities were only following the law.

The matter in question, which involves allegations that 17 senior officials in former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration failed to return as many as 36,000 documents — several of them classified — seemed untoward from the beginning, coming as it did almost three years after the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) return to power and as the campaign for next year’s presidential election began to shift into gear.

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