Month: June 2006

Ever wonder what it’s gonna be like for KMT members the morning AFTER the vote’s been held to impeach President Chen?  I mean, they’ve just spent an entire month in an anti-Chen delirium.  Marching.  Yelling.  Encouraging their kids to throw eggs at Chen posters.  Boy, it sure felt good.

But like all good things, it had to come to an end sometime.  Chen’s party looked at the charges, and saw nine out of ten were political in nature.  As for the remaining charge, corruption, there was no firm evidence that Chen was personally involved.  Chen’s party held their ranks, and the KMT failed to get the two thirds vote necessary to remove him from office.

So now, after one incredible, dizzying month, comes the hangover.  The consolation prize – toppling the cabinet – must look about as appealing as a bowlful of cold porridge.  And like most hangovers, the most dominant feeling will be the one of regret.

The Chen haters will regret that they couldn’t bring down the president despite his low poll numbers.  How could he survive?  Didn’t the polls say he had only a 5.8% approval rating?

That, they did.  ‘Cept the polls ALSO said the KMT would win the 2004 presidential election.  Doncha hate it when life throws ya curve balls like that?

Personally, I can’t summon up much sympathy for the Chen haters, the guys who just a few months ago sought his removal for abolishing a defunct council which for the last seven years has had no meetings, no budget, and no members.  No, my sympathy’s for the other guys, the guys in the party who hate graft, and truly believe that Chen’s guilty as sin.

Don’t laugh about the "hating graft" part.  Not every KMT member’s corrupt.  Sure, you can call them hypocritical, if you like.  After all, the KMT has a LOT of ill-gotten assets.  But if your old man left you a massive inheritance, how quickly would YOU give it all back if you learned that he had stolen most of it a long, long time ago?

Those are the guys right now who’re slapping their heads and muttering, "We shoulda listened to Ma!"  (That would be Chairman Ma of the KMT:  Ma Ying-jeou.)  You see, Ma’s first instinct was the right one:  Let’s wait until we have hard evidence that Chen himself is corrupt, THEN let’s move on to impeachment.  If the KMT had waited and gotten that evidence, then Chen’s party would have deserted him.  They would have deserted him, or they’d have been thrown out of office in the next election.  No one’s going to risk their job defending a crook.

That approach would have required patience, however.  Instead, the KMT listened to the counsel of fanatics like James Soong, who insisted on striking while the iron was hot.  We’ve always hated Chen and everything he stands for, said Soong, but now the public has turned against him as well.  The man’s got a 5.8% approval rating, for cryin’ out loud!

Evidence?  We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence!

At that point, someone should’ve cleared his throat and announced that all of this was well and good, but why should Soong’s advice be preferred over Ma’s?  When you think about it, Soong has lost not one, but TWO presidential elections to Chen, in 2000 and in 2004.  Ma, on the other hand, actually BEAT Chen in a mayoral campaign back in 1996.  Who on earth would take strategy lessons from a two-time loser instead of a proven winner?

The KMT, that’s who.  Meanwhile Chairman Ma, sensing an immanent party revolt, switched positions.  It was a terrible move for the country, but a terrific move for himself.*

Here’s why:

Suppose for a moment, just for a moment, that Chen really IS guilty.  My gut feeling is that he’s just being railroaded by some pretty unpleasant people, but I confess to having a few doubts.  Why did he say that his wife never directly received vouchers from the SOGO department store [as a bribe]?  Was it Clintonesque parsing, or just an innocent slip of the tongue?  The China Post naturally assumes the former, and for all I know, they may be right.  But I would defy ANYONE to give a two hour long speech like the one he gave without making a few mistakes.  Heck, I can’t talk for two MINUTES without some kind of flub.

(Just the other day, I met a group of Taiwanese acquaintances, including one by the name of "Joy."  Now, all of us know another woman with the same name, so I asked them if they’d seen the OTHER "Joy" around.  "You know," I said, "the THIN one.")

(Whoops.  That’s not the way it was supposed to come out!)

Anyways, suppose Chen’s really guilty, but no one knows that for sure because the KMT was too lazy to do the hard work of proving it.  As I said earlier, his party isn’t convinced of his guilt, so they stand behind him and he walks.  That’s bad, but something even worse can happen later.

The absolute worst part of all this is that incriminating evidence could show up next week, and that evidence would no longer matter in any legal sense.  As Ma said a month ago, there’s only one bullet in the chamber.  There’s one, and only one, chance to impeach this president.  An impeachment vote against a Taiwanese president can only be made once every three years, so if this attempt fails, then no more attempts are possible.  (Chen is constitutionally obligated to step down at the end of his second term in two years.)  As bad as it is for the guilty to go unpunished, I regard it as much worse for the PROVABLY guilty to go unpunished.  This impeachment bid, which Ma said was irresponsible but went along with anyway, now makes the latter an unfortunate possibility.

Now, let’s assume something else.  I’ve considered the possibility of Chen being guilty, so let’s now consider the opposite.  Suppose Chen is innocent, as I believe him to be.  The impeachment bid fails, and an innocent president keeps his job.  No harm done, right?

Wrong.  There are opportunity costs involved in the impeachment effort, legislative roads not taken that might have been more productive.  Hurricane season is upon us, and still a flood control bill languishes.  An innocent president may indeed walk, but innocent Taiwanese may soon end up swimming or drowning.  Their houses may be deprived of electricity, or buried entirely by suffocating mud.  Those are not insignificant costs for the public to wind up paying for this little foregone conclusion.

Finally, there is one other harmful effect that could potentially happen.  A month ago, a member of James Soong’s People First Party suggested that the threat of a presidential impeachment was a good thing, because it gave an incentive for the president’s family and associates to walk the straight and narrow.  Much as I disapprove of the PFP’s capitulationist policies towards China, I have to admit that I admired that legislator’s thoughts on deterring corruption.  Sadly however, he hadn’t followed this avenue of thought to it’s logical conclusion.  If he had, I believe he would have come out against the impeachment vote.

Think on it:  If someone trains "a gun with one bullet" on you, you have a powerful incentive to tread softly.  If he fires and misses, that incentive instantly vanishes and you breathe a sigh of relief.

Likewise with the impeachment bid.  Hang a legal Sword of Damocles over Chen’s head, and those close to him have a powerful incentive to behave themselves.  Let it fall harmlessly, and that incentive disappears.  In fact, a perverse incentive has just been created.  My man Chen’s untouchable from now on, some folks might reason, so why shouldn’t I get mine?

Thus a measure intended to punish corruption, might, paradoxically, end up encouraging it.

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* I believe Ma’s change of heart on the impeachment issue ends up strengthening his leadership role in the KMT.  For as soon as impeachment fails, his initial circumspection will be lauded.

"If only we had listened to the wise leadership of our beloved Chairman…" moderates will sigh, as they ponder what might have been had they had waited to get the full evidence.

The hawks might say that too through gritted teeth, but they too, will find Ma more attractive now.  He’s just proven that he’s a team player, not some kind of Achilles pouting in his tent when he doesn’t get his way.  Alright, so he was a little reluctant to embrace the impeachment drive, but that can be forgiven.  What matters is that he put his game face on, and gave it 110%, despite his initial reservations.

At the end of the day, the entire episode leaves moderates admiring Ma.

And hawks?  Right now, they LOVE the guy.

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N.B.  Since this was written BEFORE the actual vote was taken, I don’t actually KNOW that the impeachment will fail.  Seems a pretty safe guess, though.

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UPDATE (June 27/06):  Came home this evening, and saw a somber Ma Ying-jeou on TV saying something in Mandarin.  Take it that means the impeachment failed.

The View from Taiwan confirms what we all expected.  While I’m happy that Chen gets to keep his job, I’m even happier that I don’t have to hit the delete button on this post.

Me, selfish?  You’d better believe it!

UPDATE #2 (Jun 27/06):  I originally wrote that polls gave Chen an approval rating of 20%, but later remembered that there was one poll where his numbers were a LOT lower.  Sure enough, this poll gave him an approval rating of 5.8%.  The number has been corrected in the post.

UPDATE (June 28/06):  The English-language media here gave me the impression that impeachment could only be attempted once every three years.  One of President Chen’s enemies says otherwise:

Although the proposal to recall the president failed to pass, People First Party (PFP) legislators yesterday immediately drafted a motion to topple the Cabinet, with party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) saying they would push for a another recall motion after a new legislature is convened. [Emphasis added]

"As long as the Cabinet dissolution plan doesn’t fail, it is certain that [a second] motion to recall the president will succeed," Soong told people before ending a sit-in outside the legislature.

I take it as a given that Soong understands the rules for presidential recalls better than I do.  Still, it really looks like he’s counting his chickens before they hatch.  Before his little plan can come to fruition, he has to topple the cabinet, Chen has to dissolve the legislature, and Chen’s enemies have to pick up 2/3rds of the seats in the new legislature.

Problem is, the KMT hasn’t committed itself to that course of action yet.

Even if they do sign on and topple the cabinet, President Chen would have to be so stupid as to dissolve the legislature without taking a look at the polls first.  The KMT and its allies need to hold 2/3rds of the seats for an impeachment / recall to succeed, but if Chen believes they’ll pick up that many seats, there’s no way he’ll dissolve the legislature.

Chen will only dissolve the legislature if he thinks it’ll be advantageous for him to do so.  Otherwise, he simply installs a new premier and cabinet.

A few weeks ago, the China Post suggested that the KMT could spend the next two years toppling premier after premier, cabinet after cabinet.  The notion that the KMT could do this repeatedly and not eventually be punished by the voters seemed absurd to me.  Fooling all the people all the time, and all of that.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when the China Post ran up the white flag on a cabinet non-confidence vote earlier this week:

The recall campaign was a bad play from the very beginning. Ma Ying-jeou, chairman of the Kuomintang who demanded President Chen to resign but didn’t want to recall him, was forced by the hawks within the opposition party* to join in the [presidential impeachment] campaign James Soong had launched…

Then…the Kuomintang started to collect the signatures of at least eight million eligible voters who want the president to step down.

That’s significant because at least 8 million voters would have to give Chen the thumbs down in a referendum for a recall to be sucessful.  A formal referendum would be unnecessary were Chen to resign after being presented with a non-binding petition showing 8 million would vote for his ouster.

Although [Ma] claims seven out of every ten voters wish the president would quit, the public has responded very coolly to the collection of signatures — less than one million signatures collected so far.  [I believe the number was about half a million as of Monday – The Foreigner] The tide seems turning in President Chen’s favor since Ma decided to join in the fray.

Fortunately, the bad play may come to an end with the lawmakers voting on the recall motion…Please do not go on trying to impeach the president, though he deserves a recall. Nor should a no confidence vote on Premier Su Tseng-chang be initiated, for the Cabinet may be toppled but the president will remain unscathed.  Should Ma decide instead to pursue the anti-Chen drive to the end, Taiwan would see its political chaos worse confounded. [Emphasis added]

Thus reason slowly reasserts itself.  But of course, that’s just at one newspaper.  What about within the legislative ranks of the KMT itself?

Some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday urged People First People (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to abandon a plan to push for a motion to topple the Cabinet, saying that it might damage KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

"Ma has been raped by Soong one time. I appeal to Soong not to rape Ma again," KMT Legislator Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) said, referring to when Ma swapped his initial hesitation regarding the [presidential] recall motion to become its supporter, because of pressure from pan-blue camp leaders.

Ma raped by Soong?  Eww, tone it down, fellas.  Led around the nose, maybe, but not raped.

"The Cabinet’s dissolution will cause social turmoil and influence economic performance, and the KMT will be blamed for all this," [Chang] said.

Chang may be wrong about the last part.  Maybe the KMT can avoid the blame – this time.  Maybe they can get away with toppling one cabinet, maybe even two.  But voters aren’t stupid, and the KMT can’t keep doing that with impunity for the next two years.  So the China Post‘s latest position is the correct one:  At the end of the day, Chen will still be standing, and the KMT is gonna look mighty impotent if it insists on imitating the gang that can’t shoot straight.

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* Ma was also pressured by anti-Chen media figures, as evidenced by this piece that all but questioned his manhood for not supporting the impeachment drive.

The View from Taiwan has a post about the death threats that were issued over the weekend against KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou in the southern city of Gowshung.  Let me go on record as saying that this is outrageous; the underground disc jockeys who made those threats should be hunted down, prosecuted, and thrown unceremoniously into a prison cell.

Which they can then share with KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou and former KMT chairman Lien Chan.  Both of whom are ALSO guilty of issuing public death threats against political rivals.

The interesting thing about the latter two is that whenever they issue statements that someone should be murdered, the China Post always excuses it by claiming that the Mandarin expressions that they used can be interpreted in other, more innocuous ways.

At that point, it becomes very difficult for a non-Mandarin speaker such as myself to evaluate whether we’re being given the truth or a whole lotta disingenuous spin.*  Let’s be honest: It’s a bit ambiguous if someone uses the common English expression, "politician John Smith is going to be toast".  Of course it can mean that they want to defeat Smith politically, but it can also mean something much more sinister.

Having said that though, my suspicion is that there’s probably only one interpretation for a "dare-to-die assassination squad".

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* The smart money would bet that it’s disingenuous spin.  C’mon, it’s the China Post we’re talkin’ here!

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UPDATE (June 17/06):  The news on Thursday was that Ma Ying-jeou apologized for declaring that President Chen would be "toppled" and meet with a "foul death" if he didn’t resign from office.  I was going to give him credit for that here, but then I noticed that he did so only after CHARGES were filed against him.  In essence, Ma said, "So sorry – now go arrest somebody else."

Not sure if that really deserves much of a pat on the back.

Meanwhile, Friday’s papers informed us that four of the accused underground radio stations were raided and three of their talk show hosts were arrested.  One of them asked why she was being arrested, while pro-KMT stations that advocated assassinating President Chen or former president Lee were left untouched by the law.

Good question.  Doesn’t necessarily mean that these three shouldn’t have been arrested, but it’s still a good question.

A better question is what’s to be done with Ma.  Politically, it’s impossible to arrest him.  You’d have riots on your hands.  President Chen would be accused of being a dictator, at home and abroad.

Arrest Ma?  Some pretty serious consequences involved, there.

The alternative, however, is also unpalatable.  It’s patently unfair to punish three common folk while letting the chairman of the KMT get off scot-free.  To do so does violence to the principle of Equality before the Law.

As I said:  What to do, what to do?

UPDATE (June 20/06):  The Taiwan News dismisses the statements allegedly made by the underground radio stations, claiming that they were made "tongue-in-cheek".  That may be so, or it may just amount to special pleading.  I honestly can’t say.

But even if the threats WERE done with tongue planted in cheek, they still constitute a threat to social peace.  One lone crazy took the KMT’s hyperbole seriously in 2004, and managed to single-handedly cause a whole heap of trouble.  An air passenger who makes a bomb threat quickly learns, "I was just joking," isn’t an acceptable excuse.

UPDATE (June 24/06):  One of the alleged death threats made at one of the radio stations consisted of an elderly woman calling in and calling for Taiwanese to "rise up in rebellion and raise our hoes."  Sorry, but that doesn’t sound much worse than Pat Buchanan’s "peasants and pitchforks" comments a few years back.

Yesterday’s papers also covered the antics of Chiang Lien-fu, KMT member:

One lawmaker…took a small doll resembling [Taiwan’s President] Chen to the podium.  [He] then whipped out a toy gun and pointed it at the doll’s head and fired.

"The 23 million people here [in Taiwan] will help you end your life," Chiang said as he pulled the trigger.

(Image from the June 24, 2006 ed of the Taipei Times.)

Classy.  Must really burn him up that that KMT assassin in ’04 was such a bad shot.

UPDATE #4 (June 24/06):  I’ve been remiss in not pointing to Maddog’s post on the subject, where he provides a pretty thorough accounting of KMT threats / violence against political opponents.  But get this:  That laundry list doesn’t start from 50 years ago, but from 2004.

UPDATE (June 28/06):  Yesterday’s Taiwan News had an editorial listing some of the placard slogans at an "Impeach Chen" rally:

“Execute [President] Chen Shui-bian!”

“Liquidate Chen Shui-bian!”

“Liquidate [President Chen’s wife] Wu Shu-chen!”

“Assassinate Bian!”

“Drink A-bian’s blood!” [A-bian is President Chen’s nickname]

Interestingly, yesterday’s Taiwan News points out that James Soong has tended to use less violent rhetoric towards President Chen than KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou, despite the fact that Soong has advocated more confrontational tactics than Ma.

Don’t know how long that’ll continue:  Today’s Taipei Times quotes Soong as saying, "I would like to shed my blood for Taiwan if the bloodless revolution [to remove President Chen from office] fails."

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Visited Taoyuan yesterday, and saw a Taiwanese motorcyclist wearing a grey Nazi helmet, complete with tilted, clockwise swastika.*  I wondered if he was even remotely aware that he was celebrating an ideology that would have classified him as an untermenschen.

Ah, well.  Not everybody can be a rocket scientist.

Seeing him though, made me regret that I didn’t go to yesterday’s anti-Chen rally in Taipei.  Likely as not, there would have been one of those Chen-as-Hitler effigies present, which I’d really have liked to have gotten a picture of.  I suppose it’s the irony that appeals to me.  This week, Chen voluntarily ‘delegated’ some of his powers, heeding demands by members of his party who were fed up with his falling poll numbers and an insider-trading scandal involving his brother-in-law.

Voluntarily relinquishing power – sure sounds like Hitler to me!

All this aside, the request to delegate executive power initially struck me as being unconstitutional, and indeed, Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT argued exactly that on Thursday.  Opposed to this were other commentators, who pointed out that since the limits of the Taiwanese presidency are vaguely defined in the first place**, relinquishing some of the powers that the president currently holds poses no constitutional problem.  Taking this a step further, Joe Hung of the China Post (and no friend to Chen) wrote that the only power the ROC president is explicitly given is the power to appoint the premier, so Chen’s decision to delegate really represents a movement to a more faithful reading of the constitution.  If Hung is right, then Ma is surely wrong:  It can hardly be unconstitutional for a president to relinquish powers he was never authorized to exercise in the first place.

Regardless of who’s right, the opposition can smell the blood in the water***.  To the consternation of his supporters however, Ma is playing it cool on all the talk of impeachment, claiming that he prefers to pull the trigger when he can be certain of hitting his mark.  Here though, he leaves unspoken the very real possibility that impeachment proceedings may do little more than rally dispirited and disillusioned Chen supporters.  Because while alleged insider trading by a brother-in-law may be politically embarrassing, it certainly isn’t an impeachable offence, provided that the President himself wasn’t personally involved in the matter. 

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* The orientation of the swastika is not an unimportant detail, as a level, counter-clockwise swastika is a Buddhist symbol here, which is frequently used on signs to designate vegetarian restaurants.

** If the limits of the ROC presidency are truly ill-defined, then surely that would be an additional argument in favor of further constitutional reform.

*** Not being an ROC constitutional scholar, I’m still trying to figure all of this out.  But what I CAN say with some confidence is that there probably isn’t much constitutional basis for opposition demands that Vice-President Annette Lu step down because of her "lack of charisma".  I may not know much, but I’m reasonably sure that being charismatically-challenged isn’t a high crime or misdemeanor.

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UPDATE (Jun 4/06):  I neglected to mention that some of the responsibilities that Chen gave up have nothing to do with his position as president, and instead are due to his position as a party heavyweight.  At least some of this should therefore be viewed as an intra-party power struggle, rather than as a constitutional violation.