KMT Splits?

Yep, there was still one larva on the leaf where I had first seen them. They had turned into this.

BREAKING: DPP Sec-Gen again summonsed by Special Prosecutors. Still named as "related person/ 關係人" not defendant or suspect. Thus technically no right to lawyer.

KMT Caucus Whip resigns over Control Yuan vote, scribes the Taipei Times. An interesting signal of what's going on inside the KMT...

Lin and the KMT caucus blamed outgoing Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien (王建煊) for the “surprising outcome” on Tuesday night, after it became clear that KMT lawmakers had failed to vote in line with the party’s wishes.

Not only was incoming Control Yuan president Chang Po-ya’s (張博雅) nomination confirmed by only a hair’s breadth, 11 of the 27 candidates for Control Yuan members were voted down by the legislature, despite Ma’s insistence on a “complete passage that leaves no one behind.”

The President, who is the Party Chairman, had insisted to his legislators that everyone pass. The KMT rejected the bulk of Control Yuan nominees. The President's clout in his own party does not appear great enough to get everyone to hold their nose and vote his way on Control Yuan officials. Ma is a lame duck in his own party.

Recall that the trigger for the occupation of the legislature was the KMT's decision to cut off the debate before it began, declare it completed, and then declare that the Services Pact had passed review and was now law -- without a vote in the legislature. It seems clear that the KMT lacks the power to compel its legislators to line up behind that dog of a service pact, if it can't even get them to vote for a routine bit of favor-swapping corruption like the Control Yuan nominees.

Hence the real problem with the delay in the Services Pact isn't the Sunflowers. They just make a convenient whipping boy. The real problem is that the KMT legislators don't want to pass it, and can't be made to.

I suspect they will just have to wait until after the election in November to move on the Services Pact.
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Daily Links:

• Wang Dan, exiled dissident from China, sided with Sunflowers and is anti-CCP: can't get special dispensation to return to Taiwan. Pro-China, pro-KMT gangster with outstanding warrants? No problem. UPDATED: they are letting him in. 
• Sean Lien, KMT mayoral candidate, still making gaffes faster than they can be tracked.
• Brian Benedictus on The Formula that the media uses to describe Taiwan. My view is that it should include what Taiwan thinks of China. 
• Mr Blue and Mr Green discuss Sean Lien's video with foreigners
• Anti-gay videos in school from nutcase Christians: poisonous, anti-social, authoritarian American religious nuttery is finally being exported to Taiwan. It's been such a wonderful place without it.
• BBC is the latest media organ to report on the ongoing struggles of Taiwan's family firms to replace their elderly leaders. Reports have been flowing these last few years.
• In which Ben prompts the CCK Foundation to make a clarification to the Taipei Times
• China-S Kor free trade pact to hurt Taiwan.
• Great feature on aboriginal affairs in Taipei Times. KMT has reduced aboriginal lands to 13% of what they were under the Japanese, Maddog noted on Twitter.
• Danny Bloom in the NYTimes on climate fiction. Go Danny!

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