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Free Taiwan
In his article ¡§Running for president, for what?¡¨ (Liberty Times, March 5,
section A6), Lee Min-yung (§õ±Ó«i) said: ¡§If we cannot break away from the dilemma
posed by the ¡§Republic of China,¡¨ then running for president amounts to little
more than playing power games to accumulate personal fame or wealth... Future
candidates for the presidency need to tell the people how they plan to lead
Taiwan in the building of a new community with the real structure of a nation.¡¨
I believe that the most important mission for any future president is to ensure
Taiwanese establish a new and independent state based on freedom, democracy,
justice and liberty.
Dr Shigeru Oda, a justice at the International Court for 27 years, demonstrated
his affection for Taiwan in his book Witnessing One Hundred Years of Taiwan (the
Japanese-language edition was published in 2002, the Chinese-language edition in
2009). In a note added to the Taiwan edition of the book last year, Oda said in
the last paragraph:
¡§In the mid-1990s, when I was still an international judicial magistrate at the
Hague International Court of Justice, I was visited by Ma Ying-Jeou (°¨^¤E) who
had only recently resigned his post as minister of justice, in his capacity as
an international law associate professor from National Chengchi University in
Taiwan. To this day I still remember the passion he displayed when talking about
¡¥New Taiwanese¡¦ and ¡¥Taiwan belonging to Taiwanese.¡¦ Naturally, after he became
president I was full of expectation that he would strive to ensure that the
dreams of 23 million Taiwanese would now come true.¡¨
However, Ma forgot what he said to Oda and as a result expectations that Taiwan
might become an independent state any time soon are unrealistic.
Faced with this dilemma, Taiwanese need to understand the basic principles of
international law. In order to ensure ¡§Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese,¡¨ and
establish a new and independent country, we need to use people power combined
with international pressure. Only then can we break from the ¡§ROC-in-exile¡¨
framework by which Taiwan is governed.
Whoever runs for the president of Taiwan needs to articulate how such a goal is
to be achieved if he or she is to lead the Taiwanese in establishing a country
of their own.
YANG LIU HSIU-HWA
Taipei
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