please forgive me if this is completely errant, but how come the KMT is often described as “the opposition party” in taiwan’s press? the moniker seems more than just a bit disingenuous.
this is a democracy, right? the party that holds the majority in the legislature is “in power”. the presidency is but a fugurehead. he only has as much power as the majority party allows him to use. the KMT and it’s splinter groups hold a big majority in the legislature. so…why is the KMT the “oposition party” when they are they the ruling party?
yes, they oppose the president and stonewall any and everything he proposes. but, wouldn’t it be more fitting to apply the term “the majority party” instead of “oposition party”?
In some republics he would be (Italy, Germany, Israel…), but not in the Republic of China. This is a presidential system. The president has a lot of power. Just look at the armed military security around the president’s palace compared to the couple of cops at the Legislative Yuan.
When the KMT was in power, its puppet media hardly ever referred to it by name. They always called it “the ruling party” (zhizhengdang). I think it was a kind of brainwashing intended to make people think that it was in the nature of the KMT to rule for ever and ever. However, it was not to be…
The way the media still refer to the DPP and KMT as the “ruling” and “opposition” parties is a hangover from the bad old days.
On the other hand, if the media are referring to the KMT, PFP and NP collectively, it seems reasonable to call them the "opposition parties - and Chinese does not distinguish between singular and plural nouns.
[quote]
Recall of the president or the vice president shall be initiated upon the proposal of one-fourth of all members of the Legislative Yuan, and also passed by two-thirds of all the members. The final recall must be passed by more than one-half of the valid ballots in a vote in which more than one-half of the electorate in the free area of the Republic of China takes part.
Should a motion to impeach the president or the vice president initiated and submitted to the National Assembly by the Legislative Yuan be passed by a two-thirds majority of all delegates to the National Assembly, the party impeached shall forthwith be dismissed from office. [/quote]
[quote]and as has been shown by the referendum issue, the President can pretty much do what he wants without the legislature’s consent on a lot of issues.
[/quote]
You are joking, right? Why do you think Chen is refusing to name the topics on the referendum agenda? Its because as soon as he does so, the legislature will slap restrictions on it, shaping it into the utterly toothless, pointless waste of time it was surely destined to become the moment the legislature neatly slapped down diddyman Bian’s version and railroaded its own version of referendum legislation through the parliament. Unbeknownst to many, and contrary to the evidence provided by very nearly everything he says and does, Chen does in fact manage to extricate his thumb from his arse very occasionally, so he knows this.
So as long as he can remain vague on the issues, the legislature has nowhere to aim at and Chen the bobble-headed country hayseed can continue to pretend that he has a fucking clue.
Face it, referendum’s basically the only thing he has on his campaign platform of any substance, and once its revealed (as it surely will be as soon as he tells the legislature in black and white what its to be about) that there’s not a chance in hell they’ll let him go ahead and that the whole thing is just another example of the Tainan moron’s ineptitude and his inability to gauge public or international opinion, his campaign will be in tatters… unless he can quieten the laughter and jeering long enough to say, in true Scooby Doo villain manner: “And I’d have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky lawmakers…”
He’s hoping desperately that Lien/Soong will shoot themselves in the foot bigtime and take the heat off before the legislature bursts his balloon and the whole world sees his tiny pecker dangling in the breeze.
A fucking joke. But what else do you expect from a bunch of benighted asstards.
Chen the emperor’s as naked as a jaybird and not nearly so pretty.
Outgunned, outmaneuvered, soon-to-be out of luck. The ass-kicking contest needs competitors, even one-legged ones. Step up Da Bian, your country needs you.
In Taiwan, the premier is not appointed by the parliament/legislature, but by the president. In other words, the minority government is a DPP government appointed by the DPP president. That makes the KMT the opposition party regardless of whether or not it is the majority party in the legislature, since being in opposition basically means not being in government.
But wasn’t the National Assembly disbanded by Lee Teng-hui’s constitutional reforms? How can they carry out the legistlative yuan’s impeachment?[/quote]
Thanks for pointing that out, Feiren … I stand corrected.
Reading over the articles, I was surprised to see that the President can disband the Legislative Yuan, and there’s also a part in Article 5 that states:
“A political party shall be considered unconstitutional if its goals or activities endanger the existence of the Republic of China or the nation’s free and democratic constitutional order.”
Has the KMT ever tried to assert that the DPP’s activities and/or political platform “endanger the existence of the Republic of China”?
Thanks for pointing that out, Feiren … I stand corrected.
Reading over the articles, I was surprised to see that the President can disband the Legislative Yuan, and there’s also a part in Article 5 that states:
“A political party shall be considered unconstitutional if its goals or activities endanger the existence of the Republic of China or the nation’s free and democratic constitutional order.”
Has the KMT ever tried to assert that the DPP’s activities and/or political platform “endanger the existence of the Republic of China”?
Very interesting …[/quote]
Well I would think that the unification of ROC and PRC would endanger the existence of ROC AND the nation’s free and democratic constitutional order.
Before the existence of the DPP, the words “opposition party” did not even exist in Taiwan in any media stories. The term is just used to describe the party opposite of the ruling party. In a way KMT, PFP, and CNP are one party. They are all former or current KMT members. PFP and CNP members just thought the KMT became too Taiwanese under the leadership of Lee Tung-Hui.
They do. They had the delusion that they will take back China. Unification is their goal.
Well I trust what the Chinese say as much as I trust a backstabber to not stab my back. They only want to unify with a "free" China because they want to be able to maintain their money and power in that "free" unified China. I think as long as they get a good deal out of it, the fate of the people on Taiwan is of very little concern to them. A lot of these Chinese are just concerned about their own power and money and very little else. They just want to recapture their former glory and status when the KMT ruled the mainland.
[quote=“skeptic yank”]please forgive me if this is completely errant, but how come the KMT is often described as “the opposition party” in Taiwan’s press? the moniker seems more than just a bit disingenuous.
this is a democracy, right? the party that holds the majority in the legislature is “in power”. the presidency is but a fugurehead. he only has as much power as the majority party allows him to use. the KMT and it’s splinter groups hold a big majority in the legislature. so…why is the KMT the “oposition party” when they are they the ruling party?
yes, they oppose the president and stonewall any and everything he proposes. but, wouldn’t it be more fitting to apply the term “the majority party” instead of “oposition party”?
gong xi fa sai,
hongbao na lai?[/quote]
That’s simple. There’s no such thing as the “Majority Party.” It’s either the Ruling Party or Opposition Party. The KMT is not ruling, so therefore it is the opposition party.
How would you describe it in the US when the President is from one party and the Senate and/or House are held by the other? Within the bodies
they refer to majority/minority.
I think the term ‘opposition’ is more associated with parliamentary systems
The French call it cohabitation, but we know what they’re like…
[quote] Kuomintang Chairman Lien said at a news conference introducing his new book, titled “Change, Then There Will Be a Hope,” that if he wins the March 20 presidential election, he wants to become a respectable president, not a despotic leader.
(CNA)[/quote]
Well, that’s pretty big of Lien, don’t you think?
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”][quote] Kuomintang Chairman Lien said at a news conference introducing his new book, titled “Change, Then There Will Be a Hope,” that if he wins the March 20 presidential election, he wants to become a respectable president, not a despotic leader.
(CNA)[/quote]
Well, that’s pretty big of Lien, don’t you think? [/quote]
Respectable, I guess that’s why his campaign uses the following email address abien_the_lier@liensoong.org
[quote=“LittleBuddhaTW”]
Who said they wanted to unify with the PRC? I thought the KMT/PFP position was that they wanted unification when China was “free”? Maybe I’m wrong …[/quote]
There are very strong reasons to be suspicious about the KMT-PFP camp’s platform on China policy.
Call him corrupt if you like, but Lee Teng-hui basically made the KMT strong — we might even say he prolonged the party’s life by at least a decade — by building a native Taiwanese power base.
Just look at what happened to some native Taiwanese KMT politicians after Lee was kicked out. Quite a few of them defected to Lee’s TSU. Many of those who stayed in the KMT were defeated in the previous legislative election. They basically lost their voter bases after the KMT began to toe the “China” line.
Now look at Lien’s election campaign and one is tempted to conclude that his men are either dumb or colluding with China.
Lien has finally said, one month before the election, that he has never supported Lee’s “special state-to-state relations” idea. This is political suicide. Lee’s idea has strong public support. To publicly give it up one month before the election and replace it with an outdated “one China means the ROC” idea, which is far less popular, is plain dumb. You don’t throw away your beef unless you have something more appealing in your pocket.
Not to mention the fact that Lien did support Lee’s idea in 1999. There are newspaper reports to prove that. Another sign of ineptitude (senility?).
Now why is Lien doing this? He and his campaign lieutenants seem totally ignorant about election dynamics. You can see that Lien’s support rate has been falling steadily and A-bian has been catching up. This may have as much to do with the KMT’s inept campaign as the DPP offensives.
But it also makes you suspect that Lien’s campaign is directed more at the Beijing authorities than a lot of his Taiwan constituents.
[quote=“chung”][quote=“wolf_reinhold”][quote] Kuomintang Chairman Lien said at a news conference introducing his new book, titled “Change, Then There Will Be a Hope,” that if he wins the March 20 presidential election, he wants to become a respectable president, not a despotic leader.
(CNA)[/quote]
Well, that’s pretty big of Lien, don’t you think? [/quote]
Respectable, I guess that’s why his campaign uses the following email address abien_the_lier@liensoong.org[/quote]
?
the lier?
I have not checked if it works, but it seems to be misspelled, by the KMT internet guys?
