_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Ballots and Bullets and Me
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
Interestingly Taichung is not boring such that gangsters have nothing to do, nor is it so internationalized that they have trouble not attracting attention with whatever they do. Just like the baby baby bears bed. Just Right.
George
Seriously George? I'll bet you have no problem with Mayor Hu unconstitutionally staying in office for a whole year without any democratic mandate to do so as well? I'd accuse you of being a KMT apologist except you'd probably false claim to be 'independent' again ... yawn.
I thought you were going to predict some anonymously implied violence against Ma blamed on the DPP supporters to portray Ma as the intended victim engineered to elicit voter sympathy for the otherwise cold and impersonal Ma to combat Tsai's warm approach.
(Postmark 11/9/2011)
Ben,
If anyone feels that Mayor Hu is unconstitutionally staying in office, surely it must be against a specific term in the constitution. Certainly there are then procedures to handle it if there are any objections.
When I look at issues, I don't consider where they come from. Do I have any problems? I don't have any problems with a mayor that has made good changes to Taichung. Not perfect, but my personal opinion is that if I spent so much trouble objecting, will it make things better? Let's be practical here. The risk of making things worse is much higher. Risk management common sense.
I actually have no voting rights in Taichung. But before the combination, in Taichung County, we filed a report of illegal construction work going on that would effect the safety of a complex. After one year, no action even when the report was filed at the beginning of construction. In another complex in Taichung City, a swimming pool had been used for many years, and someone decided to complain that the pool was illegal because people were a bit noisy when using it; the complex was given a deadline to remove it, or they would come in and tear it down and leave a mess. The complex committee actually persuaded the original constructor to take the pool out for free.
Now you tell me which is done according to the book? The city or the County?
I think lots of people that comment really do not deal with real situations.
George
George - I vote for you to start your own blog. Stop using Michael's as your soapbox.
Do we, the Taiwanese, have a constitution? Please enlighten me.
Lewis
The constitution of the Republic of China, yes, it has been in place since the ROC Government was on the mainland.
George
I second the call for George to start his own blog. he clearly feels passionately about a range of topics and is capable of elucidating them in the written form. If George had a blog then maybe we could go there and offer some critiques in his comments providing him with the conversations he clearly wishes to have.
re: constitution. Which constitution would that be George? 1912, 1923, 1936 or 1947? The 1947 version was a rehash of the frozen 1936 version, was enacted in a state of post war chaos and civil war and did not receive a clear mandate from all the Chinese people at the time let alone Taiwanese (yes 18 representatives from Taiwan were present but no vote was put to the Taiwanese and the constitution wasn't even implemented in Taiwan until 1949 when it was duly bypassed by the declaration of Martial Law). Since 1991 that much of constitution has again effectively been frozen and by passed by the six constitutional amendments that effectively equate and limit the constitution to TPKM (though notional and absurd claim to all of china is retained out of the necessity for maintaing an option to annex Taiwan into the PRC later).
Thanks a lot, George. So much for that.
Lewis
Mayor Hu unconstitutionally staying in office for a whole year without any democratic mandate to do so as well?
There are a lot of things you can criticize and complain about when it comes to Hu but that's not one of them. He did win the election after all so one can hardly claim it to be "without any democratic mandate".
Ben,
The Constitution is in the 六法全書you can get at any of the large bookstores like Nobel.
The only way you can get me to stop commenting is by taking it out through moderation or blogging in Taiwanese.;)
Of course, if there is nothing interesting to comment on, or views seem well supported, I am generally a quite student.
George
This is rather interesting. I am brought back to my P1 (primary school form 1) textbooks. Nostalgic. Many of us were "taught" by Generalissimo Chiang and his Co beginning in 1945 or 1949. However, since there's something called the internet, and "Google", many of us too find something that is rather distinctive from what we were taught to believe.
I wonder if anyone out there who's involved in writing my P1 tetxtbooks? No wonder Google was "expelled" from my "ancestral country".
Sorry, forgot to sign just now. Lewis
You can also find online in English and Chinese on the Presidential Office's website and a number of other places. Welcome to 2011.
It is kind of interesting to that we Americans are not alone in fetishizing their constitution.
Enjoy your blog, keep up the fine work, etc. etc. – but some constructive criticism if I may. I think your piece could benefit from some indication of your sources / the factual basis for some of this stuff. A lot of what seems to be interpretation / opinion / generalization is presented as fact.
I refer to statements such as:
"Bit by bit, however, Taichung area residents have become increasingly dissatisfied with the mayor’s leadership..."
"...but the interminable approval process, delays, and changes in the plan ... has left many voters disappointed in the administration of Mayor Hu."
There must be some poll numbers to back these statements up, right? After all, "many voters" think Sarah Palin would make a fine president. I'm not saying you are (necessarily) wrong, personally I tend to believe your interpretations, as like you I'd love to see the KMT kicked to the curb. But I think we have to be careful about seeing what we want to see.
Also, I just wonder where you learn this stuff – are you reading the Chinese papers and watching the political talk shows, etc.? And if not, how do you keep up on which local factions / temples are supporting which politician?
Finally, this one seems beneath you:
"In 2010 Jason Hu did manage to win reelection in a tight election, probably due to an assassination attempt on a KMT politician by a local gangster in Taipei, which perversely generated sympathy for the KMT ..."
How different is this statement from the KMT’s claim that the Chen shooting cost them the 2004 election?
I hope I'm not too late :( but here is a good starting point for a study of the ROC constitution:
http://jujuflop.yule.org/
Links to English translations of the constitution and amendments, as well as jujuflop's incisive comments are all there.
Post a Comment