Like the Foreigner, AsiaPundit isn’t yet sure how much of a big deal this is, and is awaiting some indication of numbers and rank.:
It seems that not even KMT stalwarts believe the excuses that the party offers for its blocking of the special arms procurement bill, because an number of Taiwanese military officers have written a letter announcing that they’re taking leave of the party over the issue.
It’s a little difficult to gauge how big this story is because the number of defecting party members is unspecified. The chairman of Taiwan’s largest pro-communist party, Ma Ying-jeou, takes it seriously though, saying that:
the KMT sincerely hopes to communicate with those service members who wrote to the defense ministry in order to talk to them about their position on stalled arms procurement bill.
…
American readers should note that Ma also said that the KMT was opposed to the special arms bill because it is a “cash-for-friendship” purchase plan. In essence, he claims that George Bush’s armament offer is nothing more than a great, big mafioso protection racket. Now, if I’m not mistaken, Taiwan was the one that requested these weapons, Mr. Bush was the only leader in the world good enough to offer those weapons, and now Ma and the pro-communists spurn the weapons - and slap Bush in the face to boot!
Good luck with your next weapons request, Taiwan. You’re gonna need it.
AsiaPundit does object to referring to the Kuomintang as pro-communist though, if only because the Chinese Communist Party are ‘communist’ in name only and now rely far more on nationalism for support. The KMT has not turned hard-left, the CCP has turned hard-right.
Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan
December 29th, 2005 at 7:36 am
one probably needs a phrase book to translate the highly political blogs in Taiwan.
e.g. pro-communist = pan-blue in a pan-green blog. for them communist does not really mean communist, the terms are just used to refer to anyone who disagree with the mighty always correct “me”.
other terms used by both sides include ‘traitor’, ‘betray Taiwan’, because again, “me”=”all 23M Taiwanese”
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the arms deal is a complicated issue, but unfortunately treated as a simple dichotomy of choice by many. Ma did not oppose the deal, he even agrees to one of the 3 deals.