The three most powerful men in Taiwanese politics are President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九). The fact that they have serious trouble communicating with each other is fairly reflective of the problems and divisions in politics here in general.

Last Saturday, Chen invited Wang to a private meeting. There was no announcement by either party as to what they discussed, but the following day, Ma gave his interpretation of what happened:

Ma held an unusual news briefing at Taipei Main Station at 2:30 p.m yesterday to announce that Wang had phoned and informed him of the president’s invitation.

“I learned from (Legislative Yuan) President Wang this morning that the president had invited him to form a Cabinet,” Ma told reporters. “The KMT recognizes the president’s will to break the current political deadlock by seeking inter-party cooperation to form a Cabinet,” Ma commented, continuing that considering the interests of the whole country and society, “The KMT is willing to give a friendly response to the idea.”

A pretty sensational piece of news. However, there was a swift response from the Presidential Office, who came out with a press release within a couple of hours:

“The president did not invite Wang to form a Cabinet during their meeting,” the press release stated, rebutting reports that claimed Chen had invited Wang to be the new premier during their closed-door meeting Saturday.

The next day, Wang confirmed it was all just a silly misunderstanding between himself and Ma:

Wang yesterday said a Cabinet reshuffle was one of the topics he discussed with the president on Saturday and that he had never considered taking up the job, nor did he want to.

“We first talked about the arms procurement plan, then about the confirmation of the president’s selection of Control Yuan members and then cross-strait issues,” Wang said. “We then talked about the Cabinet reshuffle and other important government bills.”

So, how to explain the fact that Ma’s public briefing was 100% wrong? There are two possibilities:

1. Ma made a massive mistake, and instead of listening to what Wang was telling him he only heard what he wanted to hear. That would be a pretty worrying thing for a President-in-waiting; I shudder to think what could happen if he used this ‘selective hearing’ when in negotiations with the PRC.
2. It was a deliberate piece of misinformation: Ma thought that by announcing that Chen had chosen Wang to head up the cabinet he could get public support for a KMT-based cabinet, while discrediting Chen if Chen were to ‘back down’ from this deal. Unfortunately, for this to have worked he would have needed the cooperation of Wang – hardly likely given the tense relationship between the two.

(There is a third possibility, that Wang actually set Ma up: he implied over the phone that he’d been offered the job, and then innocently said “But that’s not what I said” when Ma went public. Intriguing though this idea is, I don’t think relations between the two are quite that bad)

Whatever the story, Ma comes out of this looking pretty stupid – and it’s not the first time he’s been caught out by a Chen-Wang double act. Back in October, Chen discussed with Wang about him representing Taiwan at the upcoming APEC meeting. Wang didn’t mention this private little discussion to Ma, who was then got very grumpy about not being told when it was announced by the Presidential Office.

Ma’s biggest asset is his ability to manage the media – so why has he been putting his foot in it so often recently (Michael spotted another last Saturday)?

Rank has spotted this gem about Pasuya Yao, the head of the soon-to-be-irrelevant GIO: In a poll of legislators Yao came out top of a list of ‘nightmare ministers’

According to the United Evening News last night, lawmakers cited Yao as being “unprofessional, careless, lazy, rude, and ill-tempered.”

No argument here. I was telling this to a GIO employee last night and he said, “They missed arrogant.”

Could I add ‘incompetent’ to the list too?

Taiwan is in the middle of setting up a new National Communication Commission (NCC) – which will take over as a media watchdog from the Government Information Office. Given the incompetence of the current GIO head (my hero Pasuya Yao), and its long history of censorship and oppression, everyone approves of this.

However, there have been bitter (and bloody) fights over how to setup this body – the DPP wanted it to be selected by the Executive Yuan (currently controlled by the DPP), while the KMT wanted it to be selected by the Legislative Yuan (currently controlled by the KMT). The KMT got their way – after a small concession allowing the Executive Yuan to nominate some candidates for the NCC. This week, the process for selecting the members of the NCC started, and it didn’t take long before accusations of political bias appeared.

The process is pretty convoluted. 18 candidates are first selected: 3 by the executive yuan, and 15 by the Legislature (split 8-7 blue-green in line with the split in the legislature). Then a selection panel of 11 is selected by the Legislature (again in proportion to party size), who will select the 13 members of the NCC from the 18 candidates. This selection process happened over the weekend:

Thirteen nominees for first National Communication Commission were selected yesterday following a three-day intensive review process.
…
Of those selected, three are law experts, four are telecommunication technology experts, three are mass-media study experts, and three are communications economics experts. Only two are female – Liu You-li and Weng Hsiu-chi.

NCC Member Review Committee Chairman Wang Chung-yu (王鍾渝) said the selection process was not influenced by politics. He also said he hoped that political parties would not try to interfere in the operations of the NCC and that NCC members would undertake their new positions with professional judgment.

Although Wang was claiming the process was not influenced by politics, the fact that the Blue dominated selection committee selected all 8 KMT/PFP nominated candidates didn’t escape notice:

All six candidates recommended by the Kuomintang, as well as the two recommended by the People First Party were chosen. The review committee only chose two of the six nominations recommended by the Democratic Progressive Party and two of the Cabinet’s three candidates as NCC members. They also selected the one Taiwan Solidarity Union nominee.

While the DPP were muttering to themselves about this one of their selected candidates, possibly realising his selection had had more to do with politics than media regulation, panicked and withdrew his candidacy:

In a letter to Premier Frank Hsieh, Lu said he regrets that several political parties had packed the list of NCC nominees with their supporters, asking the premier to drop his name from the list of nominees of NCC members to be presented by the premier to the Legislature for confirmation.

Unfortunately, given the way the GIO and the NCC have become political hot potatoes recently, it would take a minor miracle to get a reasonably impartial NCC. The only question is whether they will be as amusingly inept as their predecessor.

Life has been pretty good in the KMT recently: they’ve got a popular leader, won massively in the recent elections, and don’t seem to have a care in the world. In fact, one of their biggest worries is … the recent problems in the DPP:

Ma said that in order not to undermine the national image and the government’s normal operations, Chen and Lu should stop rampant infighting.

Ma stressed that as an opposition party, the Kuomintang is not glad to see such an undesirable development.” We hope them to sit down for talks and settle controversies, otherwise, it won’t be a boon to Taiwan.”

No sir. We’re not pissing ourselves with laughter and planning our 2008 victory celebrations, we’re much too mature and sincere in our love of Taiwan for that …

Presumably, if we can take Ma’s comments at face value, he is also not enjoying the internal rifts in the PFP either. With every PFP politician wondering when it will become an ‘everyone for themselves’ scramble to leave an imploding PFP, one of their legislators claimed that his own party was like ‘used toilet paper’. When challenged by James Soong on this, he tried to clarify things by saying:

Sun stressed that his comment about the PFP being “used as tissue paper” was an impulsive response to the media and he urged PFP members not to belittle themselves. After all, “the PFP plays a big part in reintegrating the KMT that Lee had torn apart,” said Sun.

Ah, the good old “When in doubt, blame Lee Teng-Hui” strategy. I must admit though, I’m struggling to understand how leaving the KMT en masse (at the same time as Lee) to form a breakaway political party can be classified as ‘reintegrating’ the KMT rather than ‘tearing it apart’.

Yesterday evening saw a much-heralded meeting between the leaders of the two main pan-Blue parties KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), at which many analysts were expecting talk of a merger. As it turned out there was little of any substance to announce:

Emerging from their closed-door meeting at the Armed Forces Hall of Heroes, the two chairmen said they exchanged views on problems of mutual concern in a “very friendly atmosphere” and reached agreement on better cooperation.

The areas of cooperation were nothing new (investigating DPP scandals, opposing various DPP proposals, work towards direct links with China), but the most interesting point was the failure to talk at all about a merger (Ma briefly mentioned that a merger was ‘a possibility’ while Soong didn’t say anything). Indeed, there was talk about coordinating nominations for elections in 2006 and 2007, which implies the two parties may stay separate for the next couple of years. To see why this is important, you need to consider the parlous state the PFP is in.

A brief history of the PFP

The PFP was founded in 2000 in the aftermath of the presidential elections – James Soong ran as an independent in that election, and after massively out-performing the KMT incumbent Lien Chan founded the PFP as a pro-China alternative to the KMT. An impressive showing in the legislative elections the following year confirmed its position as a serious political party. The KMT were forced to work with the PFP to ensure an overall majority in the legislature, and for a while the PFP was considered an equal partner to the KMT. However, things went badly wrong in 2004 – the presidential election loss was followed by a disasterous failure in the legislative election. Add to that an almost anonymous showing in the recent local elections, and suddenly a rising power in Taiwanese politics had turned into a fading party with an over-the-hill leader.

However, the killer blow for the PFP was the constitutional reform which passed in June. The new way that the legislature will be elected in 2007 – with only one candidate elected in each district – will make it almost impossible for a small party like the PFP to gain many seats (especially since there is no substantive difference between the PFP and the KMT platforms).

As a party, the PFP only has one thing going in its favour: it holds the balance of power in the legislature. Although it naturally allies with the KMT to give the pan-Blue side a majority, a combined DPP-PFP would also have a majority. So as long as the PFP can threaten to vote with the DPP on their KMT asset stripping bill, the KMT can’t afford to ignore Soong’s party.

An interesting challenge for Ma

So Soong, armed with his one trump card, is trying to negotiate his (and possibly his parties) political future. How Ma Ying-jeou handles this will be informative, as it’s his first real political challenge as KMT head[*] – and one of the biggest question marks over Ma is whether he’s smart enough to handle tough negotiations like this one. Handle it well, and he’ll convince more people that he’s got what it takes to lead a country, but muck it up and people may start questioning how much substance there is behind all his style.

The sensible course for the KMT to take over the PFP is just to wait for them to fade away: support a couple of their pet issues (a few more unconstitutional ‘truth commissions’, a bit more obstruction over the arms budget) to ensure there’s no outright war between the two camps, and just wait until the next legislative elections – at which point the PFP can almost be guaranteed to disappear.

The results from this meeting certainly implies that this is Ma’s strategy: rumblings over the last few months that Soong wants a run at Taipei mayor were explicitly ignored at this meeting (“We’re not discussing matters regarding our personal interests” was the official line), and the lack of serious outcome from this meeting means that the KMT have ensured PFP cooperation for a bit longer without any concessions.

Time is running out for the PFP – each day that passes moves them a little bit closer to becoming the ‘new New Party’.

* By ‘political’ I mean the negotiation, deal-making, and policy side of things. The whole ‘electioneering’ thing is something that noone has ever doubted Ma’s ability in – as confirmed by recent election results.

A couple of days ago, there were several reports theorizing how the 101-floor skyscraper ‘Taipei 101’ may be causing earthquakes in Taipei (via Jason).

As if on demand, this evening at 6.15 there was a healthy bump which turned out to be a 4.0 magnitude earthquake. Not a huge quake, but enough to wake you up – and interestingly the epicentre was less than 3km from ‘Taipei 101’ (data from Taiwan’s CWB).

Here’s an image of how close the earthquake was to the building (or the zoomable google maps version). I’m not sure I can remember an earthquake (that I could feel) which was centred on Taipei before; interesting coincidence …

As widely expected, the local elections in Taiwan last weekend proved to be a disaster for the DPP and a triumph for the KMT. The best summary of the results comes from Ma Ying-jeou:

“This is not a triumph for the KMT but for the Taiwanese people,” KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in a victory speech last night. “The DPP was not defeated by the KMT, but by itself.”

Pretty much true, but a strange statement for the KMT Chairman … perhaps he’ll also be running in 2008 on a “We may be useless, but the other lot are worse” platform.

Of course, these being local elections, the massive KMT victory will have absolutely no effect on national policy. This point has been largely lost on most of the media and politicians, who have been desperately trying to attach great significance to the result. Here’s an example:

Although yesterday’s elections were local government polls, the ruling and opposition parties considered the results crucial to gaining momentum ahead of the 2008 presidential election, raising the stakes in the contest.

Momentum for … 2008? If that really were the case, I’d suggest the KMT have peaked a tad early. As if to prove how quickly this election will be forgotten (and any ‘momentum’ will disappear), today’s ‘Apple Daily’ has already reverted to their standard blood-covered body with associated cartoon-figure reenactment.

What will happen as a result is a much-needed shakeup inside the DPP. DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang has already resigned, while Premier Frank Hsieh has offered his resignation to President Chen (although it remains to see whether Chen will accept that or not). However, who resigns or loses is often quite different to who gets blamed; most of the pre-election criticism of the DPP was centred around Hsieh (with his links to the Kaohsiung MRT scandal and my favourite idiot Pasuya Yao) and Chen, while Su is still a fairly popular figure – so Hsieh may be the one with the bigger question marks over his future.

There was a much more important event in Taiwan over the weekend than elections. Posting may become a bit sporadic for the next few days/months/years due to the arrival on Friday night of this fella.

There will be plenty of people watching Taiwan’s elections this weekend:

More than 100 political observers from around 20 countries have been invited to Taiwan to observe the December 3 “three-in-one” elections, the Central Election Commission reported yesterday.

Of the political observers, about 20 have been invited by the Democratic Pacific Union established by Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). This group, including parliamentarians, political party leaders and academics, will be coming from Japan, South Korea, Canada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, New Zealand, Palau, Guam, the Solomon Islands, Peru and Chile, according to CEC officials.

Observers from Hong Kong and Macau are expected to form the largest group.

Taiwan actually has a very well-organised, open and efficient election process. But something tells me that it isn’t the logisitics of holding an election which those specially administered regions have a problem with …

A recent survey has found that 77% of Taiwanese are annoyed by the upcoming local elections:

As Taiwan’s political parties gear up for Saturday’s election, a recent survey has shown that 77 percent of local workers felt election-related events had impacted on their normal lives, 1111 Manpower Bank said yesterday.

In Taiwan, where various elections are held every year, some 58 percent of the respondents said that they were “not enthusiastic” or “not extremely unenthusiastic” about the widely reported upcoming election.

Now, one thing to remember is that Taipei City and Kaohsiung City aren’t having any elections this time around (they both elected their mayors a couple of years ago). Given that over 4 million of the 22+ million Taiwanese are resident in these two cities, only just over 80% of Taiwan is involved in any election. Now factor out the estimated 800,000 people who were involved in political rallies over the weekend, and what does that leave you? By my maths, 78% of people living in Taiwan are either not living in an election area, or participated in a rally last weekend. Or, to put it another way:
99% of non-rally attending voters are annoyed by this election.

OK. I am playing a bit fast and loose with the figures: It’s certainly possible to live in Taipei and be affected by the election that the rest of the country is having, the estimates for rallies are by the political parties (who are unlikely to underestimate attendance), and many of the rally attendees will also be from Taipei. However, I feel my methods are at least as scientific as your average opinion poll in Taiwan – after all this one claims:

The survey gathered 1,588 effective samples and was conducted over the Internet in the period November 16 to 29, with a confidence margin of 95 percent.

95% Confidence level in an internet survey? Taiwanese pollsters: the only people who make internet surveys seem scientific!

Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the claim by the survey that one third of people were suffering from “election-trauma syndrome”. I wonder whether this condition covers my impulse to start swearing at the TV as yet another advert for a politician from the other end of the country comes on?