What to make of the stories, and the subsequent denials, that Chen Shui-bian’s new year speech caused complaints from the US government?

The Presidential Office yesterday blasted a media report that said the US was displeased with President Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) New Year’s speech and had asked him to change it several times.

The draft of Chen’s speech was allegedly rejected by Washington three times prior to its release, particularly in relation to constitutional amendments that Chen said would be completed before 2008, the United Daily News reported yesterday.

The report quoted unnamed sources as saying that Washington was displeased with Chen for delivering the address without changing parts of the draft it considered unsatisfactory.

The first point to make about this is that, if the reports are true, the US complaints would have been completely perfunctory. The US government knows very well that any constitutional changes have a close-to-zero chance of happening before 2008, and certainly any changes which would upset China have absolutely no chance of getting passed by the legislature. So the worst that could happen from this speech is that Chen annoys China – and the US could very well make a “please don’t wind them up!” plea about that. The US being mildly annoyed that China might get mildly annoyed is hardly a major diplomatic spat.

This then leads onto the interesting question of who ‘leaked’ the report to the UDN – and why. It’s certainly possible that one of the many Chen-haters (whether green or blue) leaked the story in an attempt to discredit Chen further, but this doesn’t really fit. What happens as a result of this story is that:

• Chen’s major talking points from the speech get repeated in the news media for another couple of days.
• Chen can be seen as taking a strong stance on constitutional reform and relations with China while not backing down on his principles under US pressure.
• The fact that the US government is at least informed on speeches (but not given too much control over them) before they happen is highlighted.

While none of these points are going to endear Chen to your average KMT (or undecided) supporter, they are all very strong points for most grass-roots DPP members. Given that the DPP Chairman’s election is now only 4 days away – and the campaigns of all the candidates are revolving around CSB – you have to wonder: is this leak a deliberate effort to make Chen look like the man every DPP member loved up until last year?