October 10th (‘Double 10’ day) is the national day of Taiwan. In days gone by, it was a big festival with mandatory flag-waving, military parades and fireworks. Nowadays, the fireworks have gone South, the parades have been toned down, and for most people it is a nothing more than a welcome day off work. However, the president still addresses the nation on this day – and this year Chen Shui-bian gave us two speeches: A national day address, and an address to the national day rally.

For many people (both blogs and newspapers), the most eye-catching part of the speeches was the never-ending question about arms purchases. However, Chen’s comments on the need for a strong defense were only a small part of what he said. He spent longer talking about the minutae of tax reform, non-performing loans, and pension reform than he did talking about defense and threats from China.

Reform, Reform. Reform.

Chen mentioned ‘reform’ 43 times in his speeches (compare that with ‘China’ mentioned 6 times), which gives you some indication of his focus. His most concrete comments were his commitment to the governments 6 reform priorities:

Meanwhile, the government’s resolve and planned actions to accomplish our Six Reform Priorities will neither change nor waver. These reform priorities include–completing the constitutional reengineering project, pushing for the second-phase financial reform in order to strengthen Taiwan’s economic competitiveness in the global community, reinventing a tax system that upholds social justice, reforming the preferential interest rates of 18 percent, taking necessary actions to return properties inappropriately seized by political parties to our people, as well as reforming the media culture and upgrading the quality of our society.

One interesting aspect of this is that three of these (tax reform, interest rates and financial reform) are purely economic issues. Although this shows that Chen understands that famous maxim “It’s the economy, stupid”, it made for a stupendously boring speech. Here’s a sample:

Since the government set the so-called “2-5-8 financial agenda” in 2002 to reduce the average non-performing loan ratio (NPLR) to less than five percent and raise the average capital adequacy ratio to eight percent within two years, the NPLR for domestic banks, which once reached a record high of 8.09 percent, had been lowered to 2.83 percent by August 31, 2005. Moreover, the average capital adequacy ratio has been raised to more than 10 percent. Non-performing loans, with a total amount of NT$1.4694 trillion, have been dissolved.

Gripping stuff. The other reform priorities are notable for the fact that Chen doesn’t stand a chance in hell of succeeding on any of them (and almost certainly knows it):

• Constitutional reform. This has always been Chen’s number one priority, and although it is a worthy cause, it faces a massive obstacle: The oddities of the Taiwanese constitution ensure that the only way this can happen is via a referendum bundled with a major election[*] (either legislative in 2007, or presidential in 2008). Given that the pan-Blues are still grumbling about the referendum held with the 2004 presidential election, there is no chance of them letting that happen again.
• Recovering stolen assets. Unless there is a massive falling out between the KMT and the PFP, the pan-Blues majority in the legislature will ensure this goes absolutely nowhere.
• Reform of the media. The pan-Blues have radically different ideas about how to reform the media, and again, their control of the legislature means that any of Chen’s proposals will be unlikely to be even seen in the legislature – let alone passed into law.

Why the focus on reform?

So, given the fact that half of these reforms will fail, what is Chen talking about? The answer is that it’s not about reform – it’s about taking the moral high ground as the ‘reformer’. Chen knows that the pan-Blues won’t let him do anything significant in the remaining years of his presidency, so all he can do is keep talking about what he would like to do if those meddling kids didn’t keep getting in his way. If he can paint himself and the DPP as the reformers and the KMT as the obstructionist reactionaries, then the lack of real results won’t be too much of a problem when the next round of elections arrive.

To back this up, Chen took several sideswipes at the KMT (for obstructing the arms purchases, for selling off assets, and for not ‘returning his goodwill’), as well as the PFP (for blocking the arms bill), and the pan-Blue controlled legislature in general (for failing to implement his reforms). However, it wasn’t just the opposition parties that he took a dig at:

The tasks to accomplish “economic revitalization” and “comprehensive reform” are meant to create win-win situations for employees, employers and the government. They are not, as alleged by some, government policies that lean toward the business community or big corporations.

Who is he talking about here? Well, of course the opposition has criticized him for cozying up to big-business – after all they’ve criticized him for just about everything. Well, as others have already noted, a week ago DPP member Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) announced a “new DPP movement” which made demands of reform in the party (it’s that ‘reform’ word again!), and was widely seen as a power-struggle inside the DPP. Although the goals were fairly vague, here was one of the complaints:

Luo, who is tied with Kuomintang candidate Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) in opinion polls, said many voters have told him they are disappointed at the DPP’s tilt toward business groups after it swept into power in May 2000.

Luo has always been fairly close to Chen Shui-bian, and DPP in-fighting can be as hard to decipher as the famously byzantine internal KMT power struggles, but maybe Chen is less than pleased at the implicit criticism of his presidency from Luo’s new initiative.

So there you have it: Criticism of the opposition, veiled criticism of his own party, and an attempt to claim the title as ‘the great reformer’ were the main features of these speeches. Apart from that, there was nothing too exciting in the speeches, but at least it didn’t rain too much and the guests could enjoy the parade.

* For a change to the constitution to succeed, it needs 50% of the electorate to vote for that change in a referendum – in other words, you need public support and a very high turnout to succeed. The only way to ensure this is to tack the referendum onto a popular election.