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Thursday, October 22, 2015

KMT Makes Smart Moves

LanyuDanno_2015_101
Orchid Island.

For months now, Eric Chu, Chairman of the KMT, has been denying he would run for president. On Saturday he reversed that decision.

How long ago was this date and move against Hung planned? Who knows? But Chu has to take a leave of absence, and although sources differ (Taipei Times), he can take about 90 days, which will get him to election day, more or less.

More importantly than running for President, the first thing Chu did was to move to give Wang Jin-pyng another term as a party list legislator... (TT), even though he repeatedly said the party would not be doing that...
One of Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC) radio show host Lan Shuan’s (蘭萱) questions was about about a possible re-election bid by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who is now in his third term as a KMT legislator-at-large.

“Current KMT regulations stipulate that legislators-at-large can only serve two terms, although those who have made special contributions to the party, meet the needs of the party and have served as legislative speaker, are eligible for re-election,” Chu said.
The KMT news organ reported that the Central Standing Committee is already putting this in motion, according to the KMT news organ.
Legislator Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟), who is also a member of the KMT Central Standing Committee (CSC), stated yesterday that he had obtained the endorsements of 10 other CSC members to table a motion to amend the KMT’s nomination regulations on the party list for at-large legislators. He said that the amendment would lift the current two-term limit on a Legislative Speaker’s legislator-at-large seat, allowing Wang to be nominated for an unlimited number of terms.
It is difficult to see this as anything but a defeat of Ma Ying-jeou, who tried to destroy Wang Jin-pyng two years ago and lost in court.

Chu himself is not enough to save the legislature, only Wang Jin-pyng, the unofficial leader of the Taiwanese legislators in the KMT, can do that. Bringing Wang back on board was a sharp move. The KMT is now well positioned to recoup some of the seats it would probably have lost, but it is hard to say how many, perhaps only a few in the north. None of these moves, it seems to me, will have much effect south of Taoyuan.

Chu also made another important move: he announced a plan to visit the US in Nov.

Still, it's the old KMT. Chu posted on Facebook a post that allegedly was written at midnight, but appeared at 8, so I'm told, and was pilloried by netizens as the Straits Times observed.

Frozen Garlic was eloquent in his post on the weekend's events:
The other big contrast that I want to focus on is the assumed relationship between the party and the state. Near the beginning of his remarks, Chu stated that the KMT’s future is tightly bound up with the future of Taiwan and of the ROC. In other words, an election disaster leading to the demise of the KMT could be expected to spell ruin for Taiwan and the ROC. Chu was not alone in tying the party and state together. Several previous speakers made similar remarks. The KMT is, in essence, the ROC. It is disheartening for me to hear this sort of rhetoric after more than two decades of democracy. The KMT elite seems to still believe the Leninist assumption that it is a vanguard party leading the state. They seem not to understand that in democracies, parties are a level below the state. The democratic system can remain quite healthy even as new parties emerge and old ones fade away (or crash and burn dramatically). No party is irreplaceable.
Yup.
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7 comments:

  1. Replacement of Hung will only give KMT an instant comfort of mind, bad for fundamental reorganization. DPP did not replace their candidate in an unwinnable race in 2008 and now DPP is back. If Chu lost this election, it means KMT's strongest candidate for the year 2020 election is gone.

    But it will be great for Taiwan's democracy so I welcome the head-on collision between Tsai and Chu.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nuclear power plants can't be "detonated." They're not nuclear weapons. Entirely different materials, layout, design.

    By analogy, a candle can't explode. It can only burn. A stick of dynamite, on the other hand, can explode.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, you're missing something about the new nukes in Britain: if the Chinese do get into financial problems, which seems likely at some point, then their share of the plants can be bought for a song. It's not actually obvious who is screwing who here. Still it's not what I would do, which is to allow fracking in Lancashire and build new coal and gas fired power plants.

    ReplyDelete
  4. About Wayne Pajunen's Oct. 17 KMT bigwigs foster emancipation
    "http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2015/10/17/2003630240"
    -----------------------------------------------
    Mongolian cluster fuck in Manchurian Taihoku? A self-engineered one? In order to reset a lonnng-bamboozled Taiwan?

    Makes sense to me. Too many are the “martial law lite” details of Ma’s two terms that hint at such. In some quarters of Internet Taiwan, Captain Mark Ma has long been rumored having been anointed in Washington with the understanding that his mission of scuttling Chuuka Taihoku (中華台北) must be completed by the time he vacates the deck of the “Formosa Maru”.

    Now, does that mean that Taiwan will find next year the bedrock upon which to stand firm enough to establish itself a state by, say, May 14, 2018? If you do not hold your breath on that one, you are not alone (*). As long as the apparently only viable contender of this presidential race runs on the drumbeat of “Taiwan is the ROC is Taiwan is the R….. R…..TR….. TROCK….. trock….. trock ….. trrrrr….. (**)”

    Time for “Taiwan” to resume ringing true, ringing Japanese. As in “Wansei Back Home”, 《 故郷-湾生帰郷物語!》(Furusato — Wansei Kikyou Monogatari)(***). Because born on Taiwan, you are all born Wansei. Wansei applies also to the offspring of the political refugees. . . if they can identify with the Taiwan that nurtured them.

    天佑大日本帝国台灣、 God bless Taiwan

    -----------------------------
    (*), (**): You Are Not Alone
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKTURLymT8Y

    (***): 映画《湾生帰郷物語》7分間予告篇
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii_AgiBRcnQ

    ReplyDelete
  5. Re: Xi's visit to the UK. At the state dinner the Queen stated that it was Deng's one country TWO systems that led to UK returning Hong Kong to China. This was a subtle reminder to PRC to uphold the two system part of the Joint Declaration. PRC must have been anticipating demonstrations against Xi because busloads of PRC/Xi supporters turned out to cheer and try drown out the Tibet and Falun Gong and other critics. BBC oosted on its Facebook page a video report: "Were Chinese supporters perhaps not exactly what they seem..."

    https://www.facebook.com/bbcnewsnight/videos/vb.260212261199/10153167950176200/?type=2&theater

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nuclear power plants can't be "detonated." They're not nuclear weapons. Entirely different materials, layout, design.

    It's a joke, and yes, they can be detonated, just not via nuclear explosion.

    ReplyDelete
  7. 粉鳥 /fenniao/ : n. pigeon (slang: dick)
    很鳥 /henniao/ : adj. slang, of a big loser
    鸽子 /gezhi/ : n. pigeon (slang: the police)

    ReplyDelete

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