December 2007 – Page 2 – The Foreigner in Formosa

Taiwanese Corruption In Perspective

Been wanting to comment on the China Post‘s Three cheers for Hugo Chavez editorial for a while now. Same old "Dictatorship ain’t so bad as long as the economy hums along" schtick. Yeesh. While I’m not going to reply to the cries of We’re not worthy!, I will to this point:

The Venezuela [Chavez] has ruled since 1999 will still be plagued by corruption and cronyism. But what country is immune to these? Certainly, Taiwan is not one to cast the first stone.

Taiwan’s China Post likes to portray the Republic of China asbeing a den of corruption under President Chen, but the numbers don’t exactly support that characterization. According to Transparency International,Taiwan is the 34th cleanest government on the face of the earth (tied with Macao and the United Arab Emirates). Meanwhile, Venezuela ranks 162nd, putting its level of governmental corruption on par with nations like Bangladesh and Cambodia. (Only 13 out of the 180 countries surveyed were found to be more corrupt than Venezuela.)

Now, being #34 is nothing to brag about, and Taiwan’s government certainly has plenty of room for improvement. But being #34 is a heck of a lot better than being #162, any day of the week. Or, to put it another way: if Taiwan were to crack down on its corruption problem and move up 34 places in the rankings, it’d join the company of clean-government winners Finland, Denmark and New Zealand. And a similar 34-place improvement on the part of Venezuela? Well, that’d put it just a bit ahead of such corruption-free nations as Iran, Libya and the Philippines.

The Taipei Times made a similar point on Dec 11th:

What matters is that systems of accountability [in Taiwan] are in place to deal with these robber barons. The fact that 10 ministers have been arrested in less than eight years is proof that the system, though imperfect, is working.

10 ministers arrested in less than 8 years? That’s a lot, and let’s not pretend otherwise. In Venezuela however, no ministers are being arrested (or even being investigated); government auditors instead target a few local officials as the prime subjects of their financial probes.

(Doubtless that’s because municipal corruption by mayors BELONGING TO THE OPPOSITION must be the biggest graft problem Venezuela faces.)

Postscript: Caracas Chronicles directs its readers to the Miami Herald‘s coverage of the Suitcase of Money scandal,where it is alleged that Hugo Chavez tried to illegally contribute $800,000 to Argentina’s newly-elected president. Naturally, this jarred my memory about a corruption scandal the China Post used to go on about concerning former Taiwanese president Lee Tung-hui. Story goes that an airplane carrying him was once ordered to leave the U.S. when it was discovered that he was trying to smuggle $17 million in 89 suitcases into the country. Anyways, that’s the story.

Funny thing though – Taiwanese papers seemed to have all the juicy details, but for some reason, there wasn’t a PEEP about it from the American press. Now, you’d think a big story like that – a foreign country’s corrupt ex-president tries to launder 17 million dollars of ill-gotten loot in America – why, that’d be big news. Surely at least ONE of the customs agents involved must have come home that night and said to his wife," Honey, you wouldn’t believe what happened at work today…"

So who does the guy’s wife go to? Not to the local papers – nah, that’d be too easy. Instead, she places a long distance call. To tell the press.

New York Times? Nope. The Washington Post? Uh-uh. Newsweek or Time Magazine? In your dreams.

No, our American housewife’s first choice is to call the China Times, et al. In Taiwan. Probably speaks to them in Mandarin. Which by some miracle, she just HAPPENS to be fluent in.

Uh-huh.

(Gee whiz, the scandal here isn’t that Lee Tung-hui tried to launder $17 million – which he didn’t. Or that KMT-affiliated newspapers would plug an obviously fictitious story about a president they hate with a passion. No, the real scandal is that the Taiwanese educational system apparently produces sizable numbers of people who can’t recognize a big, steaming pile of water buffalo poop when it stares them right in the face.)

UPDATE (Dec 19/07): Today’s Taiwan News featured a story stating that Taiwan would not be included in Transparency International’s 2007 survey, because the organization believes that local perceptions of the country’s corruption level will be skewed in the run-up to the 2008 elections.

Taunting The Opposition

OK, I know it’s campaign season here in Taiwan, and politicians want to fire up their supporters. But are statements like this really necessary?

[Ministry of Education Secretary-General Chuang Kuo-jung] has become a household name because of his snappy comebacks and caustic remarks about the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its top leaders, including calling presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) "sissies," "gay-like" and "wimps."

You wouldn’t walk up to a semi-reformed ex-convict and question HIS manhood, would you? Well in a way, the KMT is a bit like that ex-con. The party doesn’t behave as badly as it used to, but it’s hardly a model of what a loyal opposition should look like, either. Ultimately, the KMT didn’t use violence* when the sign on the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei was recently changed over its objections to "Liberty Plaza" – and as a reward, its leaders were called a bunch of effeminate pansies! Good grief, do the pro-independence parties really want to ENCOURAGE the KMT to bust heads during future confrontations of this sort?

Naturally, homosexual organizations and women’s groups were outraged. This kinda took the cake, though:

[Lai Yu-mei, secretary-general of the Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association,] said schoolteachers have complained about Chuang. "We’ve been receiving a lot of protest phone calls every day," she continued, "and most of the teachers were disgusted and didn’t know how they could teach children with Chuang setting such a bad example." [emphasis added]

Ya don’t know how to do your job when politicians in the background start talkin’ trash? Here’s an idea: Why doncha just suck it up and TEACH instead of whining about it…ya pantywaists.

(Oooo. Sure hope all those bad-ass schoolteachers don’t get all medieval on me now. Heavens to Mergatroid, they could keep me after class and make me write a hundred lines on the blackboard yet!)

* I am assuming here that the KMT supporter who drove his truck over 6 people during the name-change stand-off was nothing more than a deranged individual acting on his own.

PhD Holders Say The Darndest Things

From Dr. Joe Hung’s Monday column, Chen: gunslinger at a poker game

[Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian] wants voters to receive all four ballots at one stop, making it extremely hard, if not impossible, to abstain from voting on a referendum he has proposed to recover what he calls "ill-gotten" assets of the Kuomintang (KMT). [emphasis added]

This is just about as silly as the BBC reporter who recently said that the blood-thirsty Sudanese mob baying for the teddy bear teacher’s head was "good-natured". Dr. Hung: if your heart is so set upon abstaining from next year’s referendums, it ISN’T impossible. Nor is it extremely difficult. In fact, it’s as easy as falling off a log.

Dr. Hung, all you gotta do to make your fondest wishes come true is to spoil your ballot.* Problem solved. Choose both "Yes" and "No" options. Tear, spindle or mutilate your ballot. Heck, draw cute little happy faces in the margins, for all I care. It’s a task so simple, I daresay even an intellectual like yourself can handle it.

But then, I don’t really think you’re so dense as to not realize this. What you REALLY object to about the one-stop voting format is that it makes it extremely hard, if not impossible, for people like you to SELL THEIR ABSTENTIONS to the highest bidder. Or to intimidate others into abstaining as well.** And on those scores, abstentionists deserve no sympathy whatsoever.

More overwrought absurdity from the good doctor:

Chen may have some disturbances created at polling stations… If there are scores of voters demanding the one-stop distribution, the guards will have no way of controlling them. Should free-for-alls take place at a third of all polling stations, the [Central Election Commission] is entitled to declare the parliamentary elections invalid and announce another round of elections.

The current Legislative Yuan has to dissolve on Jan. 31, and the new legislature must be sworn in Feb. 1. But the new parliamentary elections can’t take place in a mere 19 days! The one certain result is that the Legislative Yuan [would be empty.]

Enter President Chen. He takes center stage by issuing emergency decrees, which, according to the Constitution, have to be ratified by the Legislative Yuan within ten days of issuance. With the nation’s highest legislative organ ceasing to function, he may do what he wishes and, if there is opposition, may call it a rebellion and declare martial law. And there is no Legislative Yuan to deem it necessary to request the president to terminate martial law in accordance with the Constitution. President Chen has vowed not to declare martial law during the rest of his second and last term. His promises, however, have seldom been kept. Besides, he will have a good alibi this time. He has a rebellion on his hands, which requires the enforcement of martial law. He will then be free to have a new constitution of a republic of Taiwan adopted and run for president and win.

Short-time readers of the China Post should be forgiven if they get the impression from this that Dr. Hung disapproves of martial law. Because nothing could be further from the truth: following the contentious 2004 presidential election results, Dr. Hung and the China Post begged – BEGGED! – President Chen to declare a state of emergency. Flash forward to 2007, and we’re treated to the spectacle of Dr. Hung working himself into a lather about a scenario which he himself prayed for, only 3 years earlier!

Take a valium, Joe. And make sure you practice extra-hard drawing all those little happy faces.

* Which is not to suggest that I approve of either spoiling one’s ballot or abstaining from voting. I’m simply pointing out that the one-stop voting process does not represent as insurmountable a barrier to abstention as Dr. Hung portrays.

** An abstention on the referendum measures is ROUGHLY the same as a "No" vote.

How Defective Chinese Products Reveal Beijing’s Priorities

Y’know, I sure wish it’d been me who’d made this observation:

Since China is a totalitarian state*, it means the government has its fingers in just about every conceivable pie there is, except the ones it really ought to. Monitoring speech? Check. Blocking internet access? Check. Busting dissidents who post online (with the help of Google)? Check. Forcing women to have abortions if they violate [the] “one child” [policy]? Check.

One thing the Chinese are not short of is government oversight. It’s just that consumer safety is not a priority for them at all.

* I’d call it authoritarian instead, but pffft. The guy’s general point still stands.

A Procedural Suggestion

A big dispute in Taiwan over how the planned referendums are to be carried out alongside the Jan 12/08 legislative election. The KMT and their allies would like a two-step process, whereby voters would cast votes for the legislative election first, and then move to another room (or even another building!) to cast their referendum votes. The pro-independence parties however, prefer a one-step process, where voters are issued 4 ballots at once, which they then cast into 4 separate ballot boxes.

The arguments pro and con are these: The KMT claims the one-step process will lead to confusion and ballots being placed into the wrong ballot boxes; pro-independence parties say that the two-step process is flawed, because it allows KMT election monitors to observe which voters vote in a referendum the KMT disapproves of. In addition, the pro-independence parties believe a two-step process would reduce turnout for the referendum. (I just waited an HOUR to vote in the legislative election, and now you want me to wait ANOTHER hour to vote in the referendum, too?)

An editorial in Thurday’s Taipei Times heaped ridicule on the KMT’s argument:

The pan-blues insist on a two-step voting procedure, arguing that the one-step voting formula adopted by the [Taiwanese Central Election Commission] would create confusion for voters and result in disputes at polling stations on election day.

But what’s so confusing about it?

Under the one-step format, voters will receive two ballots for the legislative elections and two referendum ballots at the same time and then cast them into four different boxes. So, are the pan-blues saying that Taiwanese voters are too stupid to follow instructions as simple as picking up four ballots and casting them into four different boxes?

I agree that the one-step process is the way to go, but add that if the Taiwanese really want to idiot-proof this, they might want to consider color-coding the ballots and ballot boxes. White ballots, pertaining to issue 1, go into the white ballot box. Yellow ballots, concerning issue 2, go into the yellow box. Pink and brown ballots are cast into their respective boxes, too.

Now, if you’re really, REALLY concerned about voters goofing up (or the inhibitory effects of partisan election observers*), you’d keep the idea of color-coded ballots, but nix the multiple boxes. White, yellow, pink, brown ballots – have voters put ’em all together at once into A SINGLE ballot box. Sure, it’s a bit more work for vote counters to sort them out afterwards, but it’s not rocket science, either. Just remember everyone: White ballots go into the WHITE pile, yellow ballots go into the YELLOW pile…

* The KMT is particularly interested in reducing turnout on the referendum question of whether voters think national assets stolen by the KMT over 40 years of martial law should be recovered. By law, the results of the vote are invalidated if less than 50% of voters cast ballots on the issue.