Taiwan's KMT Has Too Much Power, and Yet It Still Wants More

Thursday March 13, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Buoyed up by their veto-overriding majority in the Legislative Yuan, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is resorting to Gestapo and gangster-like tactics to carry out their whims. With no proof to back up their claims, KMT legislators Chen Chieh, Lo Ming-tsai, and Luo Shu-lei along with caucus whip Alex Fai forcefully entered the Democratic Progressive Party campaign offices on a fishing expedition. They had heard allegations that the First Commercial Bank had waived the lease on the office for the DPP. To the KMT, the mere suspicion of such gave them a supposed right to storm into the offices and demand records.

The legislators and their followers clashed with DPP members before they were driven out and sought police protection. It is a bad sign that KMT legislators already feel that the overwhelming majority they hold in the Legislative Yuan excuses them from guilt and offers them immunity from punishment. For Taiwan old-timers it seems like the KMT are reverting to behavior typical of the immunity they had during the Martial Law period. If the KMT would get the presidency, things will only get worse.