Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The DPP and the crisis of democracy in Taiwan

Taiwan News Editorial

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party faces a major crossroads Sunday when delegates to a party congress will select a new party leadership and officially launch its campaign for the Nov. 27 special municipality mayoral elections.

After leading her party out of the morass of debacle in back to back legislative and presidential elections in early 2008 and scoring major gains in city and county mayoral polls and a series of wins in legislative by-elections, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in an landslide May 24.

Ma’s actions forfeit his leadership’s legitimacy

James Wang 王景弘

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) may have been elected in a democratic process, but after his inauguration, he has done all he can to destroy democratic mechanisms, moving the country toward dictatorship and dragging relations with China back to the civil war era as if they were an internal domestic issue between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party. By ignoring the nation’s sovereignty and democracy, he has forfeited legitimacy to rule Taiwan.

With his hired hands in the Referendum Review Committee, Ma has deprived the public of their referendum rights, directly challenging their freedom of speech. By letting his party lead the government, he has destroyed the balance of power by centralizing power in a one-man dictatorship.

US analysts urge Washington to pay attention to ECFA

Taipei Times

While the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) will have modest global economic effects, the geo-economic implications are significant enough to demand strategic attention from the US, two US international economists said in a recent study.

Daniel Rosen and Zhi Wang of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote that the ECFA underscores the importance of securing US economic engagement of the first order in Asia.

Taiwan Voters Peek Behind the KMT Curtain of Corruption in Taichung

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Jason Hu was born in Beijing and grew up in the hierarchical, one-party state culture of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). As a one-party state, it was a culture of privilege, power, and entitlement. Within that culture one could easily rise if one had reasonable talent, kept one eye closed under the party mask of hierarchical respectability, and was loyal to the party regardless of its actions. It was a culture fostered by Chiang Kai-shek (CKS), a warlord among warlords and one who manipulated events so that he seemed the logical choice to bear the mantle of Sun Yat-sen. If one followed the above precepts particularly that of loyalty, one could expect to be taken care of by the benevolence of the KMT. Jason Hu did that and was rewarded by being its representative for Mayor of Taichung.

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