02.16.06
Say it loud, and say it proud.
KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou says something which the KMT really needs to say:
“The KMT has stressed that the people of Taiwan have full authority to determine the future of their nation, whether it be unification with China, declaring independence, or maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait; these are all considered options for Taiwan’s future.”
Pretty obvious, huh? Yet it’s something which the KMT has had a problem with accepting for some time. Ma is simply stating that the KMT is just one party in a multi-party democracy, and as such they have no absolute control over what happens to Taiwan. Given the KMT’s history, and the overblown rhetoric over independence and unification from both sides, it’s important to say it though. To clarify, Ma said:
“As citizens of a democratic country, the people of Taiwan are free to choose which option to pursue, so long as the choices are constitutional and do not violate any of the laws of the country.”
I couldn’t agree more. Ma went on to say that the KMT still support eventual unification - a position they’ve always held, and aren’t likely to change soon. Will the other parties applaud Ma for this statement, and say they respect (but might disagree with) the KMT’s position on unification? Or will they just try to misrepresent what he’s saying? I’m not taking bets on that one …
me said,
February 18, 2006 at 10:37 pm
True, Ma is stating the truth which os something the pan blues do not want to hear.
STOP_George said,
February 19, 2006 at 2:19 pm
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What the people of Taiwan should be asking themselves is how Ma is going to accomplish this goal (of keeping Taiwan’s authority in the hands of the its people) when it is clearly not China’s position to let Taiwan do so.
Again, Ma talks the talk — but will he do the walking? I don’t remember Ma doing any walking during the million-person anti-secession March in his own town of Taipei last year. I also remember how much respect his party had for democracy in 2004 during the referendum — when they forced the election to have 2 ballot boxes — in violation of democratic principles.
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sun bin said,
February 20, 2006 at 1:54 am
so MYJ is really learning from Blair.
sun bin said,
February 20, 2006 at 4:45 am
@stop-george
1. to accomplish his goal one needs to do NOTHING, doing nothing = maintaining ’status quo’.
2. how does 2 ballot box violate ‘democratic principles’?
STOP_George said,
February 20, 2006 at 11:22 am
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Sun bin:
1. Respectfully, you are wrong on this point. Why? Because China is NOT doing NOTHING. Which is entirely my point. Ma doing nothing (which he is good at doing) is not in Taiwan’s best interest.
2. Secrecy in voting in a national situation is a democratic right. Having 2 ballot boxes (and 2 ballots) during the 2004 referendum allowed the KMT to use this breach in secrecy to sabotage the process. Naturally, it worked. The KMT asked it’s supporters not to vote in the referendum. By having a separate ballot box, any KMT supporter who wanted to defy this directive must have thought twice about voting, knowing that this action may well be know by anyone simply watching them drop the ballot into the second box.
This breach in secrecy was noted by a major international democratic rights organization whose name escapes me at the moment.
The KMT, btw, insisted that this voting procedure be implemented.
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hongkong rubber pork chop said,
February 20, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Bingo. Doing nothing is letting China nibble away at our choices day by day, until we have none left. Doing nothing allows them to set the agenda, exclude Taiwan from the world stage as it feels. Doing nothing is to remain mute while they point 700 missiles at us in our homes and threaten everything that we’ve worked for. Doing nothing is a coward’s surrender policy. We don’t have the luxury of sitting back, letting China call the shots, and doing nothing about it.
Ma is much smarter than any of us give him credit for. He knows very well he will get himself elected on a combination of banal platitudes and jogging shorts. In the KMT tradition, he’ll make broad promises and fail to spotlight any detailed policy. The public never asks for any in any case… they are too busy watching his dress-up show. He knows he can sit on his hands for four years as president while China slowly but surely tightens it’s grip on Taiwan, further reduces it’s elbow room on the international dinner table, and coerces the Taiwanese into self-censorship. He will justify it all by saying that at least he’s not a troublemaker and he’s not doing anything to upset our ugly neighbor, not like wicked, irresponsible old Chen Shui-bian. He doesn’t have to do anything, all he has to do is nothing, and they will win.
sun bin said,
February 21, 2006 at 4:14 am
@sg
1. you were refering to Ma’s goal. that was what we were talking about.
what the govt across the strait does or what is supposed in taiwan people’s best interest is another debate, which should be left to the 23M people to decide.
2. i cannot follow your logic in this one. it was the bundling of voting that is violating the spirit of democracy.
James said,
February 21, 2006 at 4:18 am
Sun Bin, you may not ever have had the privelege to cast a political vote in your life, but anonymity is one of major requirements for a fair election. Voting in Taiwan especially requires anonymity as it is a place prone to and with a history of vote-buying. In this particular case not voting for the referendum was equivalent to voting no (remember it required 50% participation to be passed), so it was obvious what your position was if you walked out without going to the second booth.
I remember Wired had a cover imagining a future voting machine, with a bar code paper receipt and tracking number. That’ll never happen, and we should hope it never does. If that happened, your company boss could ask you to vote one way and ask you to submit a receipt afterwards. Or you could be paid to vote one way and collect your money after submitting your tracking number afterwards.
sun bin said,
February 21, 2006 at 6:22 am
there are 2 issues here.
1. anonimity, that can be solved by forcing everyone to walk through the 2nd booths regardless of whether they vote or not.
2. bundling problem, putting all questions on the same vote is a much more serious problem, of forcing people who are against Gong-tou to cast a vote.
to illustrate this point, gong-tou and presidential vote are 2 totally separate and un-related issues. if not for convenience and saving cost, they should have been cast on different dates. therefore, the so called anonimity issue is a non-issue. it is an excuse used by CSB’s bundling ploy. isn’t it?
STOP_George said,
February 21, 2006 at 1:02 pm
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SB:
The point is:
The KMT is the party that wanted the 2 box procedure to be implemented. The DPP obliged, unfortunately, and the KMT’s little anti-democratic scheme worked.
The issue is not so much about there being 2 ballots. The issue is that there were 2 ballot boxes. If the voter is hidden while he/she votes, then there is no reason that there can’t be 2 ballots — as long as it is NOT KNOWN how or if that person voted on either ballot. I voted on a 2 ballot election in a Canadian provincial election recently (and the other vote was a referendum vote). There was only ONE ballot box, of course.
In 2004, the democratic principle of “anonymity” was breached due to the KMT’s own initiative. PERIOD.
Being that Ma is now the leader of this party (that has a history of un-democratic tendencies) — this example being merely one of many, recently– the onus is up to Ma to put actions behind his words.
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James said,
February 21, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Walk through the two booths and? As separate booths, you still can tell unless you tell every voter to pause whether they vote or not. You’re working hard and you’re stretching, but you’re not going to find any good reason for the separate votes. And your choice of being forced to walk through the second booth is irrelevant anyways, as it wasn’t one they were considering.
I’ve never heard of anyone calling “bundling” a problem in any other democracy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. There is a problem of voter participation in many democracies (voter turnout is extremely high in Taiwan), and if people don’t turn out, then the vote might not truly reflect the will of the general public (think what happens to education policy when only old people turnout). One way to combat this is to put local elections on the same ballot as national ones, i.e. use bundling, in order to increase participation. In any case, votes are valid regardless of how many selections are made (you could just vote for president), so your point makes no sense. There’s unneeded pressure, loss of anonymity, and burden on the voter with separate voting boths, while it is an anonymous, unburdensome effort to choose what issues to bother voting for.
Separate voting booths clearly was a political strategy by the KMT to invalidate the referendum, and you should recognize it for what it was, especially since it worked.
hongkong rubber pork chop said,
February 21, 2006 at 3:34 pm
sun bin:
You don’t know much about the election process in Taiwan, either in the past or present.
KMT officials used to go to village chiefs with a bag of cash and let them distribute it to those who promised to vote KMT. You could take the cash or refuse, although there was a chance your name would get reported to the local KMT informant. They would tell them that KMT would know if they voted for the other guy. Since everyone involved in the whole process from designing the ballots to counting them was a government employee, there was good reason to believe this. Things are more subtle now, but at the election in question it was quite easy to observe who went into which booth, and therefore who had obeyed the pan-blue directive to boycott the referendum.
There could have been two papers to drop in the same box. There could have been two separate questions on the same ballot. Pan-blue could not stop the referendum (that time) but they were able to get the two-box scheme enforced. Anyone over about 30 years old (who isn’t a silver-spoon waishengren) saw something of the White Terror period. They take KMT spies, informers and reprisals quite seriously. It was hardly a free and fair election.
None of your arguments hold water. I hope one day you have a chance to vote for your choice of leader or on an importand policy decision that affects your future, anonymously and without fear of reprisal, even if you don’t wish the same for the Taiwanese.
sun bin said,
February 22, 2006 at 2:14 am
of course i know about buying vote and flashing vote.
i was in taiwan when i saw NT$1000 coupons handed out to voters (and this happens for both DPP and KMT), who can exchange the coupon for real cash if Chen won.
the point here is. you guys have made an extremely weak point, in fact, almost an excuse good only for discoursive/argumentative purpose.
the simple argument i make is, there is no reason for any two votes to be bundled together. just imagine if a Gongtou happen to be needed when there is no presidential election, are you going to not vote because you are afraid you are seen visiting the voting station?
sun bin said,
February 22, 2006 at 2:15 am
(i was talking about when Chen Dingnan, the candidate for Yinan last year, standing against James Soong 11 years ago)
curious bystander said,
February 22, 2006 at 8:09 am
Someone please enlighten me on the following:
Why didn’t the Central Election Committee (whatever the designated authority overseeing how the elections are to be runned) allow having two separate booths in the first place? Was the election authorities somehow unaware of the KMT’s clever ploy?
David said,
February 22, 2006 at 9:53 am
Wow! This is raking up old battles!
curious bystander: the exact same arguments you see above were bounced back and forth by the KMT/DPP and their representatives in the CEC. Huge arguments about placement of the ballot boxes, should everyone pass both ballots, layout in a U shape or a line, and so on. The final decision was a slight compromise.
I know someone who voted Lien and voted in the referendums but statistically you can see that nearly everyone who voted Green voted in the referendum and Blue voters didn’t - so giving observers a very clear idea of how everyone voted.
Personally, I think the problem was less in the voting arrangements and more in the fact that: a) Lien called for his voters to boycott the referendum and b) the questions in the referendum were pointless so noone really cared about voting in it anyway.
The View from Taiwan said,
June 28, 2006 at 1:38 pm
held it against him when one day he stridently called for no negotiations with China until the Chinese removed the missiles pointed at Taiwan, and the next, this had to be “clarified” by a sudden reversal of his position. Then there was the time thatMa inserted a toe into the Centrist depths by saying that the KMT could support independence if that’s what the people wanted. Oops! That too had to be corrected the following day. The point is that Ma has been doing the Ma Shuffle (one step forward, one step back, 180 degree turn left, 180 degree turn right. Repeat) over and over again
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