Criticism
Koo Kwang-ming and other pro-independence leaders openly criticized that Chen, as president, is "not constitutionally authorized" and has "no legal power" to confine Taiwanese political future and freedom with the pledge. In addition, some of Chen's supporters such as Vice-President Annette Lu have suggested that the pledge may have loopholes such as the definition of military force. Furthermore, while the pledge stated that Chen would not support a referendum, some have suggested that it does not exclude the possibility of a referendum occurring by citizen initiative. The possibility of loopholes has occasionally led to considerable unease in Beijing and in Washington, D.C.
Under strong objection from pro-independence leaders and his supporters, who threatened to walk out the inauguration ceremony immediately once the pledge was recited, Chen did not explicitly repeat this pledge in his 2004 inauguration speech after his re-election though he alluded to the pledge by stating that the assurances he had given in the 2000 inaugural address remained in effect, and he has stated many times that the pledge remains in effect.
Read more about this topic: Four Noes And One Without
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)