Taiwan, China, and other things. Recovered from the defunct TypePad platform.
(Heh. Just can’ts help me-self. After all, that’s how, as recently as yesterday, the China Post characterized Chen Shui-bian’s previous election wins. So I figure fair’s fair.)
A-gu and Michael Turton both share their thoughts on yesterday’s presidential election. And in an earlier post, A-gu puts forward some ideas about the way forward for Taiwan’s independence party.
UPDATE (Mar 24/08): David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy has a write-up on the counting of the votes.
A day before the election, his surrogates threaten an American national, Theresa Shaheen, for offering to make clear whether Ma still has an American green card:
Theresa Shaheen, former chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan, is being given a…warning against getting involved in the "green card" issue over Kuomintang presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou.
"We wish Ms. Shaheen to know that it’s unlawful for an foreign national to get involved in an election in Taiwan," a top aide to Ma said yesterday. According to the Election Law, no foreign nationals may electioneer for a candidate in Taiwan.
Interestingly enough, the Ma campaign was more than happy enough to quote "unnamed sources in America" who said their candidate had nothing to worry about – his green card was no longer valid. But give one of those sources a verifiable name and face (along with an answer Ma doesn’t like), and suddenly his attack dogs come out snarling.
(By the way, the whole "Is Ma’s green card still valid or isn’t it?" controversy was profoundly uninteresting to me. If anything, the fact that Ma considered emigrating from Taiwan when it was still a dictatorship in the ’70s inclines me to think more, not less of him!)
UPDATE (Mar 31/08): Therese Shaheen denies the KMT story that she was ever willing to wade into the green card controversy:
In her statement, in English and Chinese, Shaheen said she was "never involved in any matters" regarding the green card issue during the presidential campaign.
"Fantastic rumors about my alleged involvement, my plans to make public statements about it, and the allegation that I was doing so because I favored one party over the other were 100 percent false," she said.
KMT stalwarts begin to openly discuss changing Taiwan into an illiberal democracy:
…there is nothing "terrible" if one party controls both the legislative and executive branches of government. Nothing terrible has happened in Singapore after the ruling PAP’s (People Action Party) established one-party dominance. In fact, Singapore is the envy of the developing world, just as Taiwan once was.
It would be only too easy to rattle off a list of one-party states that subsequently became hells-on-earth. Funny how president-elect Ma Ying-jeou never mentioned this little scheme in front of the electorate. But then I guess he’s clever enough to realize proposing a soft dictatorship BEFORE the polls open might not have gone down so well with the voting public.
Taiwan’s campaign document scandal? It’s no biggie, says the China Post:
As a matter of fact, DPP city councilors of Taipei made a similar on-the-spot check on the Ma campaign headquarters on March 4.
There was no confrontation, however.
The March 5th Taipei Times and China Post‘s archives have no mention of this (at least, after a cursory check), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Still, I have a few questions about this supposed inspection. Answers to the following might help us decide how similar the two cases really are:
I find it amusing that the China Post attempts to spin the attempted theft of independence party documents as nothing more than a run-of-the-mill inspection. If the inspection was so routine, why does the China Post contradict itself by saying it was ‘inane’? Because if the check was as completely proper and ordinary as the China Post insinuates, then the KMT legislators cannot be accused of ‘inanity’ – they were simply doing their jobs. Ma Ying-jeou should never have apologized then, for blame would belong solely to the rioters: rioters who interfered with a lawful, proper, everyday inspection.
But if there’s something not-quite-kosher about the KMT’s March 12th "inspection" – as the Post concedes by calling it ‘inane’ – then bringing up cases of inspections that WERE lawful, proper and ordinary serves only to muddy the waters around the issue.
Postscript: Of course, muddying the waters is one of the China Post‘s specialties. Perhaps the most blatant example of this is when columnist and editorial writer Joe Hung tries to persuade foreign readers that the 2004 shooting of President Chen Shui-bian was staged. How is it possible, he asks, that President Chen was shot when not a SINGLE spectator at the campaign parade heard the the gunshot?
Now, any foreign reader has got to see that and think, "Wow, that certainly DOES sound mysterious." But what the average foreign reader DOESN’T know (and any damn fool living in Taiwan IS aware of) is that the shooting took place at a campaign parade where there were HUNDREDS of big, noisy-ass FIRECRACKERS blowing up. Blowing up left, right and center. Pretty hard to hear one or two gunshots in that environment, as Hung is well aware.
To be blunt then: Joe Hung has a major credibility problem. So that’s why I’m from Missouri when he tells us the March 4th and the March 12th inspections were somehow similar.
OK, this is starting to resemble bad soap opera:
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman John Kuan (關中) yesterday dismissed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) accusations that he had bribed voters, vowing to commit suicide if the rival party could back its claims.
[…]
"I will accept my punishment and commit seppuku at the party’s headquarters if they can present evidence that I have bribed others," Guan told a press conference at KMT headquarters. "The two legislators should also end their lives if they cannot prove their allegations."
Seppuku refers to the Japanese ritual of committing suicide by disembowelment.
First Alex Fai, now this guy. Well, I actually DO remember Ma Ying-jeou’s father made a similar threat a few years ago. Don’t recall this case, although I probably wasn’t paying attention at the time:
Many also remember that last October, a Central Election Commission member recommended by the People First Party, Chao Shu-chien (趙叔鍵), also offered to commit seppuku "to defend the dignity of an academic" if the commission voted on whether the two planned referendums should be held alongside the January legislative election.
Sunday’s Taipei Times has a piece on how all of this trivializes the issue of suicide, and of course I’m not going to argue with that. But the frequency of these threats recently causes me to wonder: Is this a part of traditional Chinese political culture, or a part of Japanese culture that was grafted on locally? Is there some kind of significance to the fact that members of the KMT and People First Party should specifically threaten seppuku, when both those political parties tend to feel an abhorrence of all things Japanese? And lastly, have there been any cases in Taiwan within living memory where someone has actually followed through?
I don’t pretend to know. Hey, I just live here.
UPDATE (Mar 17/08): Last night, I tried to imagine how we would react to this kind of ploy in the West. First of all, I’m pretty certain we’d consider the politician completely nuts. Beyond that though, mental health professionals would probably be given air time to voice their disapproval. Support groups for families of suicide victims would be apoplectic. People whose lives had been affected by suicide would write angry (or distraught) letters – and the politician would be forced to apologize.
That that doesn’t happen here is interesting. Different cultural attitudes towards suicide, perhaps? Or is it that civil society is weaker here, so the type of pressure I’ve outlined simply isn’t brought to bear?
UPDATE (Apr 4/08): OK, this isn’t a politician, but…damn:
On Wednesday, Liao Shu-hsin (廖述炘), the director of a pro-independence underground radio station in Taipei, allegedly immolated himself in his grief over the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) loss in the presidential election. Liao reportedly felt that his dream of seeing a “Republic of Taiwan” established was no longer possible.
UPDATE (Apr 5/08): More on the sad case of Liao Shu-hsin in today’s Taipei Times.
[A bit of satire. Readers from outside Taiwan might want the background story first.]
Widow (answering a knock at her door): Yes, may I help you?
Alex Fai: Yes, ma’am. You may not know me, but I’m a KMT
lawmaker in Taiwan’s national legislature. I’ve been authorized by the
legislature to conduct a safety inspection of the premises.
Widow (bewildered): Safety inspection? What kind of safety inspection?
Alex Fai: Fire safety inspection, ma’am. We’ve had a rash
of fires in this neighborhood caused by piezoelectric sparks from
improperly-stored diamonds. You’d be surprised how often that
happens. Anyhow, I need you to show me where you keep all of your
diamonds so I can make sure your jewelry isn’t posing a fire hazard to the
rest of the community.
Widow: Ehhh? You want to see my JEWELRY? Because it might start a FIRE?
Alex Fai: Don’t be alarmed; it’s all on the up and up. Really.
Haven’t you heard of me? I’m Alex Fai, legislator. Or should I say, legislator – AND
fire safety inspector. Well, part-time fire safety inspector. Fire safety checks are kind of a thing I like to do in my spare time… When I’m not in the legislature. You know – legislating.
Widow: This sounds pretty fishy to me…
Alex Fai: No, no, it’s all perfectly standard. In addition,
the legislature has authorized me to carry out a non-fire safety
related inspection of your home as well. Inspection of a public place, we call it.
Widow (indignantly): Public place? Why, this is MY home!
Alex Fai: Well, it is, and it isn’t, if you get my drift.
You see, YOU own a mortgage, and that mortgage is held by a BANK. The BANK’S operations are overseen by the FINANCE COMMITTEE, of which I,
Alex Fai, am a member. Ergo, your house, from a certain point of view (and by "a certain" I mean "my") is therefore public property. We lawmakers can’t be barred from
conducting inspections of public property – that’s the law.
Widow: My stars, I’ve never heard of anything so outlandish!
Alex Fai (losing patience): Ughh, am I gettin’ tired ‘a THIS. Just let me through the door, b*tch! (pushes way into house)
Ow, ow! Stop hitting me around the ears with that cane! Do you
have any idea who you’re messing with? I’m a KMT lawmaker in the ROC
legislature! We’ve got a 75% majority! I’ll sue you for violating my personal liberty! And interfering with a legislator’s lawful inspections! And, and…
Oh, thank goodness you came just in time, officers. Ha, ha, no,
there’s no need to book me and take me in for fingerprinting. And don’t you go listening to anything this sweet, little old adle-pated lady says, either.
Because as you can see from my ID, I’m Alex Fai, KMT legislator.
Say…you chaps wouldn’t mind giving me a lift back to my pad in your
police cruiser, would you? If you’re not too terribly busy?
Policeman: Anything you say, boss.
Alex Fai: Good lad.
(Disclaimer:
Neither Alex Fai nor The Foreigner can guarantee that users of this
technique will not suffer bodily harm or incarceration. Actual
results may vary.)
Chinese ultranationalists in Taiwan must be having conniptions right
about now – all their efforts to rehabilitate the notion of "One China"
shot to hell by the outbreak of violence in Chinese-occupied Tibet. And only a week before the presidential election too, when the KMT was already feeling the heat for advocating a "One China" common market.
As for Taiwan’s younger generation, the ones for whom Tiananmen
Square is ancient history, current events must be a bit of an
eye-opener. We’re all children of the Yellow Emperor, the KMT propaganda machine tirelessly drummed into their heads…
And that he’ll commit suicide if Ma Ying-jeou loses the Taiwanese presidential election on his account.
Only thing is, it was only two and half days ago that Mr. Fai tried to get past security guards by claiming he was some big hot-shot fire safety inspector. (Which isn’t bad: he COULD have said he was Art Vandelay, the architect. But then, he would have had to forgo his life-long dream of impersonating a fire safety inspector!)
With a record of honesty like this, why would anyone believe anything this guy says now?
"Vote Ma or I’ll kill myself."
A case of bad salesmanship if ever I’ve heard one.
(Alex Fai image from the ROC Legislative Yuan website.)
i-1
Been years and years since I read The Open Society and It’s Enemies, but there’s one paragraph from Book 1 that’s always stuck in my mind:
…if we approach political theory from a different angle, then we find that far from solving any fundamental problem, we have merely skipped over them, by assuming that the question ‘Who should rule?’ is fundamental. For even those who share this assumption of Plato’s admit that political rulers are not always sufficiently ‘good’ or ‘wise’ (we need not worry about the precise meaning of these terms), and that it is not at all easy to get a government on whose goodness and wisdom one can implicitly rely. If that is granted, then we must ask whether political thought should not face from the beginning the possibility of bad government; whether we should not prepare for the worst leaders, and hope for the best. But this leads to a new approach to the problem of politics, for it forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage? [emphasis added]
– Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Book 1: The Spell of Plato, p 120-121
Readers are free to agree with Popper on this one, or they’re free to agree with Dr. William Fang of the China Post, who breezily dismisses considerations of governmental checks and balances as nothing more than "the balance of power fallacy." It must dismay Fang to learn that KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou himself has become a recent convert to Popper’s point of view, now that his campaign has taken a broadside from public opinion due to the recent attempt by KMT legislators to steal campaign documents from Ma’s opponent. Saturday’s Taiwan News describes Ma’s sudden epiphany:
[Ma] reiterated that the incident stemmed from the legislators having confused their roles as lawmakers with that of law enforcers. The KMT has the advantage of holding three fourths of the seats in the Legislature, but party lawmakers should exercise more self-restraint in carrying out their legislative duties…
Ma vowed that if he is elected president, he will push for political reforms to make sure there was no recurrence of the confusion between lawmaking and executive power.
"I am supported by strong public opinion – anyone who opposes or resists reforms will immediately become a subject of reform themselves," Ma said.
That’s rich. Ma’s gonna twist arms and make the 81 Tyrants voluntarily enact curbs upon the nearly-unrestricted power that they currently enjoy – or believe they’re entitled to.
Him and what army?
From a story in today’s Taiwan News, titled, "Ma apologizes for sixth time over conflict at Hsieh’s office":
Opposition Kuomintang presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou yesterday bowed three times to apologize for the sixth time to his rival Frank Hsieh, his supporters, and [to society], in a gesture seen as damage control after four KMT legislators intruded into Hsieh’s campaign headquarters on Wednesday.
The reason for the multiple apologies was that four legislators from Ma’s party – Alex Fei, Chen Chieh, Lo Ming-tsai and Luo Shu-lei – all tried to steal documents from Hsieh’s official campaign office. Ten days before Taiwan’s presidential election. And they got caught. And all hell subsequently broke loose.
Apologies are of course in order from Ma, but the Taiwan News‘ headline reminded me of a Joe Hung column in the China Post from a couple years back, where he implied Chen Shui-bian was an unfit president simply because he said he was sorry TOO FREQUENTLY:
President Chen Shui-bian is the most apologetic chief of state in Taiwan’s brief annals of democratic government — and probably in world history as well.
He has apologized ten times in the six years of his presidency.
Hey Joe, your man Ma’s not doing too shabby himself, what with 6 apologies in two and half DAYS. That’s gotta be some kinda record too, doncha think?
If it isn’t, never fear: there’s still seven days left till voters here go to the polls. All Ma needs to do is average 0.6 apologies per day, and he’ll have achieved in a mere ten days what took Chen Shui-bian six long YEARS to accomplish.
Jia yo, Ma Ying-jeou! Jia yo.
