Well, this isn’t encouraging. The first concrete action which has been linked to Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) attempt to focus on crime has been taken by the CLA:

Companies and individuals who illegally hire foreign nationals will see their potential financial risks multiply five times starting next month, announced the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday.

Kuo Fang-yu, director-general of the CLA Employment and Vocational Training Administration who accompanied Lee to the Legislative Yuan, told reporters that there were concerns about the illegal workers resorting to crime.

“If these workers encounter problems and are not able to sustain themselves, they may resort to extreme measures such as robbery or other criminal activity,” Kuo said.

As the (very good) China Post article points out most of the illegal workers in Taiwan are young Filipino women who are hired as domestic helpers – given that they are much much more likely to be the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators Kuo’s justifications don’t make sense, and carry a rather unpleasantly racist undertone. Either Kuo just thinks the ‘crime crackdown’ is a convenient excuse to implement his policies, or he thinks that those dirty foreigners make a convenient scapegoat for Taiwan’s problems with crime.

To be clear, Taiwan does have a problem with illegal overseas workers – with an estimated 20,000 people (mainly from Southeast Asia) working illegally – but this problem is caused by rules imposed by the CLA which encourage exploitation of the workers. A situation which has just been exasperated by this new move. This is nothing new though – the problem is legislation dating back to 1999; this article from three years ago describes the very reasonable demands by foreign workers:

“The first is asking the CLA to re-include foreign workers under the protection of the Labor Standard Law (勞動基準法); the second is to remove the current employment agency system and replace it with a direct employment system to end agency-fee exploitation; the third is to set up a regulation to enforce time off for these workers. Lastly, we are asking for the right to switch employers freely.”

The Hope Workers’ Center was founded to assist needy foreign migrant workers in Taiwan. It helps more than 70,000 foreign workers a year.

According to O’Neil, in 1998 the CLA included foreign migrant workers in the Labor Standard Law, which aims to protect the basic rights of employees. For instance, the law specifies that the total number of working hours shall not exceed 48 per week, while overtime hours have to be strictly recorded and paid by employers.

“However, after foreign workers had been included in the law, employment agencies and employers started to file complaints about the hassle of keeping track of overtime hours and asked the CLA to exclude foreign workers from the law. As a result, in January 1999, foreign workers were once again deprived of their rights. Right now, there is no law to protect them at all.” O’Neil said.

Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) has been Premier of Taiwan for just under two months – and has decided that it’s time to show where his priorities lie:

Faced with public complaints concerning rising crime rates, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) has pledged to improve social order and list it as a top priority for his administration, adding that he will withdraw from political life if he fails to live up to his promise within six months.

This is a good move in so many different ways: Tackling crime is obviously something important for Taiwan, it’s something that affects people directly (as compared to the abstract way the unification/independence arguments have any impact), it’s something which Premier Su actually has some control over, and it attempts to distance him from the topics of eternal Green-Blue bitching.

At the same time as Chen Shui-bian is talking up his grand vision of constitutional reform, which (while I agree with it strongly in principal) is going to go nowhere and get dragged down into the same old independence battles, Su is asking to be judged on his performance fighting crime. As Premier, Su has to support everything the President does – as shown when he spent hours defending Chen’s NUC decision to the legislature, despite having little or no say in the decision to scrap the council. So the best he can do is to make it clear what are his ideas and what are Chen’s.

Of course, the cynical amongst you will be wondering how sincere this promise to withdraw from politics if he fails is. After all, Su promised to (and did) step down as DPP Head to take responsibility for the local election failure of his party – only to be promoted to Premier as a result. Politicians who fall on their sword in Taiwan usually reappear sooner rather than later. There is also the question of how Su wants to be judged:

“You may find some statistics in our report, but we are not using those statistics as a gauge of our performance in maintaining social order,” Su said. “I care more about how people feel about our work, hoping that they can feel our determination to attain our goal.”

“I will resign from the premiership and withdraw from Taiwan’s political circles forever if most people do not feel any improvement concerning social order six months from today,” Su said.

Translation: Su will be judged by a government-sponsored opinion poll. Given that opinion polls in Taiwan have a long history of bias dependent on who commissioned them, Su should be pretty safe.

Cynicism aside, this is a good move by Su. I must say, I’ve been impressed with him so far as Premier – he’s always been an immensely likeable politician (one of the few!), but he seems to be showing a general competence and political savvy as well.

Yesterday was the first meeting of the Procedure Committee for the next session of the Legislature. Given the recent shouting matches over the NUC, I would have bet good money on this descending into arguments, pushing, shouting and possibly (as before) bloodshed. If fact, it was one of the least confrontational meetings in years.

It seems that someone (Premier Su?) has decided that proposing bills with zero chance of progress is not the way to go and has opened up the possibility of actual progress in the Legislature:

With the Procedure Committee considering this session’s agenda for the first time, the DPP caucus decided to temporarily shelve controversial bills dealing with ill-gotten party assets, an arms deal with the United States and confirmation of Control Yuan member nominees.

The move was made, the DPP said, as a sign of good will to improve relations between the governing and opposition parties.

Instead, DPP legislators submitted 26 central government appropriations bills that were frozen by the pan-blue alliance in the last session. The bills later made it through the Procedure Committee and put on the agenda of related legislative committees for review, where their chances for passage remain uncertain.

The KMT reciprocated by not proposing a recall on President Chen.

So, does this imply everything will be sweetness and light in the Legislature from now on? Of course not. However, it does mean that the less controversial bills proposed by the DPP actually have a chance of a sensible hearing in the legislature – and that can only be good news.

Whoever is behind this new more conciliatory approach should be commended. It seems it is even affecting some of the appointees:

In another move to placate the opposition, the DPP caucus nominated Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳) as one of the Procedure Committee’s three conveners.

DPP legislative whip Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) hoped that Tsai, one of the body’s characters known for his comic routines, would relieve the tense atmosphere of the committee and make it possible for the DPP to smoothly push through more bills this session.

Given that the legislators usually act like children, asking a clown to help run things makes perfect sense. (Update: And as Jason points out in the comments, he deserves the title ‘clown’)

A few days ago I criticized Chen Shui-bian for not clarifying the status of his inauguration promises (the ‘4 noes and 1 without’). He has now done so:

In his inaugural address in 2000, Chen pledged not to abolish the National Reunification Council and the National Unification Guidelines; not to declare independence; not to change Taiwan’s official name; not to push inclusion of the so-called state-to-state description of Taiwan-China relations in the Constitution; and not to promote a referendum to change the status quo in respect of the question of independence or unification.

However, he said in the interview that the precondition for his five pledges has already disappeared.

“The precondition was that ‘as long as China had no intention of using military force against Taiwan,’” Chen said. “However, China’s intention to invade Taiwan is visible now.“

Glad we’ve got that clear then.

Update (March 6th): Or so you would think. A day after this interview is published we have Tsai Ing-wen (the vice-premier of Taiwan) saying this:

Touching on President Chen Shui-bian’s plan to write a “viable, timely and relevant” new constitution for Taiwan, Tsai said Chen would strictly follow the existing provisions in carrying out his constitutional re-engineering project and would not violate his “five no” promises which include no declaration of independence and no change to the national title.

Government by contradiction.

Update (March 8th): The original interview which Chen’s quotes come from is available here. Chen doesn’t explicitly say his promises no longer apply – but that’s just to give himself a tiny figleaf of deniability. For all intents, the “4 Noes, 1 without” have now been replaced by “not changing the status quo” (whatever that means). Interestingly, Chen also said this (twice) about constitutional reform:

We also affirm that any sovereignty issue that strays from constitutional proceedings not only fails to contribute to maintaining the status quo, but also should be disregarded.

Presidential elections are still two years away. While the KMT nomination is all but decided, there has been plenty of jockeying for position in the DPP to step into Chen Shui-bian’s shoes. Frank Hsieh was a frontrunner until his misfortunes as Premier, but it seems he still has plans:

Frank Hsieh is now ready to start a long undeclared campaign to bear the standard of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2008.

Finally out of Chen Shui-bian’s shadow, the former premier chose to take a trip away from Taiwan yesterday, leaving his lieutenants to make an informal announcement of the start of the drive to run for president.

His strategy seems to be to distance himself as far as possible from the DPP leadership (going as far as leaving the country for a while) in the hope/assumption that things will get so bad for them that they’ll need to nominate someone untainted by the hand of Chen.

We can, of course, expect an enjoyable (if not necessarily well thought out) campaign from Hsieh:

Pasuya Yao, former director-general of the Government Information Office, commands the young campaign office staff.

Praise be!

Second idiot of the day is DPP legislator Wang Hsin-nan, who seems to have a different version of the constitution to everyone else and wants to change it. He gets excellent support from the China Post journalists who appear equally clueless:

Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Wang Hsin-nan yesterday proposed deleting references to unification in the constitution, spurred on by the president’s move to scrap the National Unification Council (NUC) on Monday.

Interesting idea which only has one minor flaw: there are NO references to unification in the constitution.

Update: The slightly more sane eTaiwanNews clarifies this one – there is a reference to ‘national unification’ in the introduction to the additional articles of the Constitution, which is what Wang wants to get rid of. It seems to be about as relevant as the reference to Sun Yat Sen in the intro to the original constitution though …

In a meeting with the DPP legislative council’s working group to amend the constitution, Wang, a hard line independence supporter, proposed a draft of a new constitution for Taiwan which permitted a referendum on independence or unification.

Given that his party believe Taiwan is a sovereign independent nation already, I’m not quite sure what he’s proposing here – probably because he doesn’t know either. Any constitutional change (either a change in national boundaries due to ‘independence’ of Taiwan or unification with China) is already put to a referendum. So what he wants is already in the Constitution.

President Chen Shui-bian has promised a new constitution for Taiwan but, in recent remarks, said any change to the constitution needs the approval of three-quarters of the opposition-dominated legislature before it is put to a referendum.

You’ve got to love the clueless staff in the China Post: ‘in recent remarks’? The requirements for changing the constitution are very clearly defined in the constitution. This isn’t a unilateral decison made by CSB one dreary Thursday afternoon – it’s a defined process which the whole country voted on last year.

Wang suggested having a section in the constitution forbidding changes to the nation’s sovereignty as a whole or in part — or forbidding any form of annexation from China — unless a referendum was held on the issue first and over half of voters in the referendum agreed to the change.

Not only is this already in the constitution, but Wang himself voted for the constitutional amendment to do this just over a year ago. Not only does he not know what’s in the Constitution, he doesn’t know about the ammendments that he made to the Constitution (Article 1 of the ammendments no less – hard to miss you would think)

The original constitution describes Taiwan as a different region from the mainland Chinese region.

No. It Doesn’t. The original constitution does not mention Taiwan at all (the ammendments make one reference to the Taiwan provincal government).

Besides deleting references to unification from the constitution, Wang also proposed describing the two regions as the “Republic of China” and the “People’s Republic of China.” This is effectively describing the relationship between Taiwan and China as “state-to-state” and is bound to anger Beijing.

Anger Beijing? Confuse them more likely. He’s suggesting that the ROC describes one of its regions as the ROC, and another of its regions as a state with its own completely separate constitution? My head hurts.

However, DPP lawmaker Lin Cho-shui, a senior member in the ruling party, slammed the proposal.

“This is not only unlikely to pass (through the legislature) but will strike an even more serious blow to the party in the next legislative elections,” Lin said.

“It will bury the DPP’s future.”

Finally some sense at the end of the article. However I think Lin Cho-shui is being a bit too polite about his colleague’s proposal. If Wang is one of the geniuses entrusted with handling Chen Shui-bian’s constitutional reform, then I might have to rethink whether I support the principle of it or not …

One outcome from the scrapping of the NUC is that we can expect a renewed bout of idiotic behaviour from politicians of all varieties over the next few weeks.

First up are the KMT and PFP legislators who obviously feel that Chen Shui-bian’s actions are so disgusting that recalling the president isn’t enough. Impeachment isn’t enough either. They’ve got to do both:

President Chen will be charged with treason for impeachment, said the PFP lawmaker.

By scrapping the NUC, Lu charged, the president further split Taiwan, ruined the mutual trust between Taipei and Washington and destroyed Taiwan’s international credibility.

“That constitutes treason against the state,” Lu pointed out.

His Kuomintang counterpart, Pan Wei-kang, reserved all- out support for the PFP move.

“We support a recall or an impeachment of the president,” Pan said. But, she added, the Kuomintang has already initiated the recall.

Priority has to be given the recall, Pan said. “We need consultation before we’ll go all out to impeach the president,” she added.

Of course, neither of these actions will succeed because the pan-Blues don’t have a big enough majority in the legislature to push them through. I imagine the DPP politicians will enjoy voting both moves down; given that everything they propose gets voted down in the legislature, it’ll make a nice change for them to be doing the blocking for a change.

The only real question is this: will Chen experience a Korea-like spike in popularity due to idiot lawmakers attempting to impeach him?

Update: Rank has also been following this bizarre little saga.

Plenty has been written about Chen Shui-bian’s decision to ‘abolish’ the National Unification Council. Given that I have serious issues with what he’s done (and how he has done it), here is my suggestion for what he should have done, along with some problems with Chen’s behaviour. If Chen really needed to address the NUC (which I don’t particularly agree with), here’s what he should have done:

The proposal

Step One: Inform the US that Taiwan is considering the status of the NUC – but guarantee that Taiwan will not change the status quo, will not break the ‘4 noes, 1 without’ promises made at CSBs inauguration, and will consult again with the US before any decision is made.

Step Two: Announce (e.g. at Chen’s Chinese New Year speech) that the NUC and the associated guidelines need to be reviewed. Therefore there will be a session of the National Security Council (NSC) to review things, and that the NUC will meet for the first time in 6 years. Whatever is decided will not affect the status quo or breach the promises made in the inauguration.

Step Three: Hold a NSC meeting (on the 27th February) at which it is agreed that the budget of the NUC (NT$1000, or about US$30) is not sufficient for the NUC to do anything but simply review and ratify proposals agreed by the NSC. Announce that the NSC has come up with a proposal which will be put in front of the NUC. The NUC will meet on the 28th February to review the proposal.

Step Four: To keep the NUC within budget, hold the NUC meeting at a local ‘mien dian’ (noodle stand), and ask all the members (including President Chen) to forgo salary and expenses. There’s a ‘Fools Noodles’ restaurant just around the corner from the Presidential Palace which could probably serve a dozen bowls of noodle for NT$1000, and seat all the members of the committee (I would suggest the local McDonalds to boost US relations, but that would almost certainly go over budget and is always packed with schoolkids).

At the meeting, Chen Shui-bian would announce the NSC proposal to update the National Unification Guidelines to something along the lines of:

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.

These Guidelines have been specially formulated with the express hope that all people on either side of the Strait can work together to find a mutually acceptable solution to the current situation.

Given the historical, cultural and economic links between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, talks should be encouraged. Taiwan places no precondition on talks, and will consider any item for discussion. However, the following guidelines should be considered for talk about unification:

1) Taiwan’s future should be decided by Taiwanese people. This is a consensus of all the people in Taiwan.

2) The people of Taiwan must see a democratic mainland before they can consider unification.

3) To reassure people in Taiwan, who still have painful memories of the ‘2-28 incident’, Mainland China must reassesses the events of June 4th 1989 before talks begin on unification. If the June 4 verdict can be reversed, it definitely reflects that mainland China has new thoughts on human value and human rights.

4) No agreement on unification can be made under threat of war. Both sides must dismantle any direct threats to the other before any talks on unification.

The rationale

Why is this a good approach? Here is what it achieves:

• It does not break Chen’s inauguration promises. In fact it is wholly in keeping with the spirit of the promises he made in 2004. Chen is right when he says that the guidelines are completely outdated – and an update is a much less controversial (and thus more likely to be supported) move than abolishing them.
• The updated guidelines say things that are mainstream views of the people of Taiwan. Anyone who opposes them would have a hard time explaining exactly what they oppose.
• The KMT and Ma Ying-jeou would have an especially hard time opposing them since the first paragraph and all four points are taken directly from speeches made by Ma since he became the KMT Chairman. (Here are links for: The first paragraph, point 1, point 2, point 3 and point 4). I’m aware that this makes the guidelines a bit over-agressive, so perhaps Ma’s original words need to be softened when made government policy.
• Management of relations with the US are very important. Informing them, and explaining what is happening before it happens will ensure that they are not overly worried about changes to the Status Quo etc.
• Updating the guidelines shows that nothing is written in stone in a democracy. A KMT government could quite easily rewrite them in 2008 – in which case the guidelines would be reduced to a statement of belief about unification of the current government.
• This achieves Chen’s goal of removing the ‘One China’ principle and ‘national unification should be the common responsibility of all Chinese people’ from official government policy.

Issues with Chen’s behaviour

Here are my main problems with what Chen has done with the NUC:

• The way this has handled must have damaged US-Taiwan relations. Although the US has stated that it is happy that Taiwan has not changed the status quo, this has only happened after some frantic diplomacy and explanation between the two sides. The fact that the US only found out about Chen’s plans from newspaper reports will have reinforced opinion that his administration is a ‘loose cannon’.
• Since he made his CNY speech, Chen has not clarified the status of his ‘4 Noes, 1 Without’ pledge. Does he now think it doesn’t apply due to Chinese threats, or does he think his move does not break the ‘1 without’? Who knows. Various DPP officials (of varying seniority) have voiced their view, but Chen hasn’t. He needs to clarify things.
• The argument that this is a reaction to China’s ‘anti-secession law’ is incredibly weak. That was passed over a year ago, and nothing unexpected has happened since then. In particular, Chen reasserted his inauguration promises (without any proviso of ‘as long as China does not threated to attack’) last February in his meeting with James Soong when it was almost certain that the ASL would be passed. Nothing unexpected has happened since then.
• This will only increase tension between the KMT and the DPP in the legislature – a real lose-lose situation. In particular, the encouraging noises the KMT were making about the arms package are almost certain to be stamped out. It provides ammunition for the more hard-core KMT members. Any moderate voices on the blue side of the divide are much more likely to be shouted down. This may be to the advantage of the DPP, but it isn’t to the advantage of Taiwan.
• Equally, it encourages a shift in the DPP to a more extreme position. The DPP is already showing signs of being out of touch with normal voters, and a shift to more emphasis on independence is likely to exasperate that. The DPP might think that a return to ‘first principles’ will give them more support, but in reality it will only appeal to people who already strong DPP supporters.

Note that, in all this, there is no reference to reaction from China. This is because the scrapping of the council does not affect policy in any serious manner; behind all the bluster, China is very aware of this and are probably happily thinking ‘roll on 2008’ and hoping that the DPP keep trying to dig themselves out of the hole they find themselves in.
(For reference, here are the original guidelines)

As has been expected for some time President Chen Shui-bian today announced the abolishment of the National Unification Council and Guidelines … or did he? Here’s what he said:

The National Unification Council will cease to function. No budget will be earmarked for it, and its personnel must return to their original posts. The National Unification Guidelines will cease to apply. In accordance with procedures, this decision will be transmitted to the Executive Yuan for notice.

So does ‘cease to function’ mean that it’s been abolished? Or did it cease to function back in 2000? The answer to both these contradictary questions is probably ‘yes’. Perhaps Chen has decided that if the US is going to base their Taiwan-China policies on ‘strategic ambiguity’, then there’s no reason why Taiwan can’t either.

Perhaps the acid test for whether this is actually an abolishment of the council lies not with Chen Shui-bian, but with his successor. The wording of this statement seems to leave room for the next president to ‘resume the function’ of the NUC and the associated guidelines. But would Ma Ying-jeou feel comfortable doing that, given his public statements about letting the people decide about unification or reunification?

Clearly Chen has chosen the wording on this statement carefully. He’s avoided clearly ‘abolishing’ the council to make some concessions to the US, and to give his supporters some wiggle-room to argue as to whether this is a real change or not. If Chen can spin this as a non-event which the pan-Blues are overreacting to (I’ve already heard one legislator call him ‘Osama bin Laden’ and of course the move to recall him is in full swing), then he may yet come out ahead.

Whatever the reasons behind Chen’s move, it remind me less of Machiavelli and more of Baldrick’s “I have a cunning plan …”

I am a big fan of Chen Shui-bian’s plans for constitutional change – the fact that noone can give a straight answer as to whether Taiwan is a presidential or parliamentary system, the constant battles between the legislature and executive over who has the power to do anything, and the whole “how many branches of government does a country really need?” question all point to the need for a new (or updated) constitution.

Unfortunately, KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou doesn’t see things that way – which means there is no chance for any change in the next several years. However, I was pleased to see that Wang Jin-pyng is publically supporting constitutional reform:

At a Kuomintang parliamentary council meeting, Wang said yesterday the party has to seriously consider increasing the membership of the nation’s highest organ to 200.

At the meeting, Wang also called for a German-style parliamentary system of government.

As a matter of fact, the Constitution mandates a dual leadership system of government. The president may appoint the premier without the consent of the Legislative Yuan, to which, however, the latter has to be responsible.

So what’s Ma’s rationale for keeping things as they are?

“The people would question the government and the parliament, if too many constitutional amendments were made,” Ma pointed out.

So to be clear: he doesn’t care whether the constitution needs reform or not – he cares about whether he would look good or not supporting a change.

Of course, the cynical take on this is that it’s hardly surprising that the head of the legislature wants to make the legislature the most important body, and that president-in-waiting Ma is more than happy to keep the presidency. However, whatever their motivations Wang is talking sense while Ma is busy sticking his head in the sand on this one.