EDITORIAL: Invisible hands at workOn today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity, of the government’s proposed national defense budget is precisely what should be happening in the legislature. Instead, through a series of obfuscations, distractions and delays, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) are preventing any review of the national defense budget. The visible hands behind the obstructionist behavior are KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi (?) That is, we might be seeing the effect of another pair of invisible hands at work.
