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.

Legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng is starting to get annoyed at the behaviour of his fellow legislators:

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday threatened to call in the police next Tuesday to protect his authority if lawmakers again try and occupy the speaker’s podium and disrupt a vote on two controversial bills in the Legislative Yuan.
…
“I will safeguard the legislative speaker’s authority,” Wang asserted. “I can’t reveal right now exactly how I will prevent irrational boycotts, but if lawmakers really occupy the speaker’s podium at that time, it is possible that the police would be brought in.”

Would calling in the cops be a good move? There are obvious dangers – most notably the idea of a pan-Blue legislator deciding to arrest a pan-Green legislators will cause outrage in some quarters (a debasement of democracy, a return to martial law, white terror, and so on)[*]. Even if it restores order to the legislature, it is likely to cause an even bigger rift between the two groups.

However, it is clear that the legislature needs some control – and appeals to the legislators sense of decorum or common deceny only serve to prove that they haven’t got any. Without even the Marquess of Queensberry to restrain them, we can look forward to further all-in-wrestling sessions unless someone enforces some rules[**].

Among the Taiwanese public there is a sense of almost universal embarassment and contempt for the behaviour of their politicians, and so I’m fairly confident that the huge majority of people would be cheering the first time a policeman evicted an out-of-control legislator.

Although my respect for Wang has plummeted since I witnessed his childish reaction to losing the KMT leadership battle, he seems to do a good job as speaker, and I’m glad he’s threatening action here. Apart from warning the legislators that he’s willing to call in the police, he also had some eminently sensible advice to the pan-Green legislators on what to do with legislation you don’t like:

Wang suggested, however, that the DPP could find ways to block the measure, including using the Executive Yuan’s veto power.

The DPP also could ask the Council of Grand Justices to determine if the law is constitutional, he continued.

After being shelved for four months, the NCC and cross-strait peace bills are set to spark a showdown, and it is time to vote on them, Wang said.

In other words: stop acting like hooligans, and start acting like politicians.

A final (unrelated) note: Would someone please buy the Taiwanese newspapers a dictionary or two. EtaiwanNews keeps talking about boycotts of the legislature (the two other local rags do the same). A boycott is when you abstain from something – not when you deliberately start a fight. Better words to describe the legislators behaviours are ‘organised riot’, ‘sit in’, ‘fight’, or perhaps ‘obstruction’.

* One of the reasons for the gladitorial atmosphere in the legislature is that some of the current DPP legislators have in fact been arrested and imprisoned for advocating democracy and freedom of speech during the martial law years – and many of the current KMT legislators were active members of the government which did this suppression. Given this history, an atmosphere of resentment and distrust is fairly understandable – and so the pan-Blues do need to tread carefully when trying to control the legislature
** I am sure the legislature already has some rules which govern what legislators can and cannot do – but I am equally sure that these rules are completely ignored.

Taiwan is a sovereign independent nation. I know this because President Chen has said so on numerous occasions. Whether China (or any of the nations that China pressurises, or the UN, or indeed the KMT) acknowledge this is a separate issue.

However, I might have to reevaluate this fact now that the font of all knowledge in the universe (otherwise known as ‘Google’) has decreed otherwise:

Taipei, Oct. 3 (CNA) Google’s listing of Taiwan as a “province of China” on its map section has raised the ire of the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) , which is asking the public to e-mail the popular search engine in protest.

At a news conference, TSU legislators Huang Shih-cho, Tseng Tsan-deng and Huang Tsung-yuan lashed out at Google for succumbing to China’s pressure. Taiwan is not a province of China, they claimed, and saying as much is a tremendous affront to Taiwan’s sovereignty.

The TSU lawmakers called for Taiwan citizens at home and abroad to e-mail Google to protest its rudeness and insensitivity by lying about Taiwan’s sovereignty simply to curry favor to enter China’s large Internet market.

They said that Google’s behavior should not be condoned any longer. Otherwise, they said, Taiwan’s sovereignty will be unwittingly infringed upon.

They want Google to immediately change Taiwan’s map description from “Taiwan, Province of China” to “Taiwan, An Independent State in Asia.”

Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government Information Office who were also present at the news conference agreed with the TSU legislators.

Here’s the proof that Google are a signed up member of the ‘One China’ club. I must admit though, that I am rather intrigued to find if you search for ‘台灣’ (i.e. Taiwan in Chinese characters) Google gets a bit confused and suggests 10 different places in Japan.

So, maybe things aren’t so cut-and-dried as they might seem. After all, if Google can’t decide whether Taiwan is a Chinese province or a Japanese suburb, then what chance have you or I of working it out?

[Thanks to Wolf Reinhold for pointing out this news story]

Last week, it was the KMT & PFP parties causing chaos in the legislature by ripping up speeches and blocking the podium, but it’s good to see that the DPP & TSU have just as much respect for the dignity of the legislature as they returned the favour yesterday:

While the pan-blue alliance was retreating to their seats, a skirmish broke out between Hung and DPP Legislator Yu Jan-daw (余政道), who was trying to grab her megaphone.

KMT Legislator Pai Tien-chih (白添枝) managed to take it back, but DPP Sandy Chuang (莊和子) attacked KMT Legislator Liao Wan-ju (廖婉汝).

Chuang pulled Liao’s hair and knocked off her spectacles, while Liao responded with a hard push.

Chuang was later taken to the nearby National Taiwan University Hospital, but KMT lawmakers blasted Chuang for faking injuries. Determined not to let Chuang get all the media attention, Liao also went to the legislature’s medical center for treatment.

Both camps then accused the other of starting the scuffle, and the KMT accused Yu of causing the mayhem under the influence of alcohol. Yu, however, denied the allegation and threatened to file a lawsuit against Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春), who Yu said hit him on the head during the disturbance.

What’s the cause of the chaos?

Although many people think the Taiwanese parliament doesn’t need a reason for a good punch-up, there are reasons (albeit not very good ones) for them. Last week, the fights were all started by the pan-Blues trying to block Premier Frank Hsieh from giving a speech … this week it was the pan-Greens trying to block pan-Blue legislation. There are three major pieces of legislation that have got up the noses of the Greens:

• The NCC bill. Currently all regulation of the media is done by the ‘Government Information Office’ (GIO) – a body which dates back to the (not-so-distant) past when the Government took a very active interest in censoring anything vaguely out of line with Government thinking. Everyone is in agreement that this body should be scrapped and replaced with a ‘National Communication Comission’ – but the debate (if you can call it that) is about the makeup of this body. The pan-Greens believe that it should be made up of non-partisan experts, while the pan-Blues believe they should be political appointees chosen to reflect the balance of the leigislature.
• The ‘cross-strait peace’ bill. The aim of this bill is to set up a body to negotiate with China – a nice idea if it wasn’t for the fact that it is outside the constitutional powers of the Legislature. It is trivial to predict the future of this bill: it will be passed despite the complaints of the pan-Greens, who will then boycott it. It will be judged unconstitutional, but the Blues will continue on regardless and meet with PRC negotiators to come to a totally meaningless agreement.
• Another March 19th Shooting ‘Truth’ investigation. If this passes, it will have exactly the same result as last years investigation (and similar to the item above). It will be ruled unconstitutional, boycotted by the Greens and come to some meaningless conclusions.

The fact that the DPP & TSU are right to oppose all three of the above proposals shouldn’t detract from the fact that they are behaving like idiots in treating the legislature as a wrestling arena. The sooner politicians in Taiwan realise that they have a functional legislative and judicial system, and that civilized nations use these institutions in preference to their fists, the better.

What has Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ got to do with Taiwanese independence? More than you might think … try comparing this news article:

The leader of World United Formosans for Independence said yesterday that he disagrees with the view expressed by the Taiwan Defence Alliance in an advertisement in the Washington Post that Taiwan, like Puerto Rico and Guam, is an autonomous territory of the United States.

Asked to comment on the advertisement placed in the American daily Tuesday, WUFI Chairman Huang Chao-tang, who is also a presidential adviser, stressed that Taiwan belongs to the 23 million people who live on the island.

With this scene from the Life of Brian:

REG: Right. You’re in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah…
JUDITH: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters…
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People’s Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
LORETTA: And the People’s Front of Judea.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
REG: What?
LORETTA: The People’s Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG: We’re the People’s Front of Judea!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: People’s Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG: He’s over there.

In case you were wondering the ‘World United Formosans for Independence’ and the ‘Taiwan Defence Alliance’ should not be confused with pro-formal independence political parties like the Taiwan Solidarity Union (which regularly polls between 5-10% in national elections), the ‘Taiwan Independence Party’ (which gained 0.3% of the vote in the last election), the ‘Peasant Party’ (0.4%) or the ‘Taiwan Number One Party’ (didn’t bother standing).

Further relevant words of wisdom from the Life of Brian can be found:

• Arguments continue over the correct Romanization of ‘Romanes Eunt Domus’.
• What have the Japanese/KMT ever done for us?
• Chen Shui-Bian’s mother addresses a TI rally: “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy!”

We’re a week into the latest session of Taiwan’s legislature – and we still haven’t had the opening speeches yet. The previous session (before the summer) set a record for the smallest number of pieces of legislation passed (and largest number of proposed legislation thrown out), but it seems they’re going for broke this time around and seeing if they can get through a whole session without even officially starting.

The problem seems to be that the pan-Blues in the Legislature just plain don’t like Frank Hsieh, the (pan-Green) premier[*]. Hsieh has been physically blocked from getting to the podium to give his speech – this included the usual farcical fights on the first day, but has since quietened down in to a stalemate where all the legislators are being paid close to half a million NT dollars each a month (over $13,000 USD) to sit around catching up on their reading.

The latest attempt to break the stalemate came from Hsieh – who suggested it be put to a vote whether he should give his report or not:

Hsieh made the new suggestion after lawmakers from the opposition “pan-blue alliance” of the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) twice blocked him from addressing the plenary session of the legislature on his Cabinet’s work agenda and its 2006 budget plan last week by occupying the podium of the legislative chamber.

This wasn’t received well by the pan-Blues who self-righteously (but correctly) pointed out it was his duty to do what they were preventing him from doing:

Noting that Constitution requires the premier deliver an administrative report at the beginning of a new legislative session, Tseng said it’s Hsieh’s official duty and cannot be a topic to be subject to a legislative vote.

The pan-Blues have given a set of demands which they want addressed before they’ll let Hsieh near a microphone:

The “pan-blue alliance” originally proposed earlier two prerequisites for Hsieh to deliver the administrative report — an apology from Hsieh for alleged Kaohsiung mass rapid transit (MRT) system construction scams and the DPP legislative caucus’ consent to the establishment of five legislative committees to look into five alleged corruption cases.

Is there any merit to these demands? In a word: No.

Although there is a good case to be made for Hsieh apologising, it isn’t something that is worth blocking the constitutionally mandated requirements of the Premier and the Legislature over. The fact that they are demanding a committee should be formed to investigate who to blame, while demanding Hsieh apologise before that committee has even started is a minor detail. At least it seems the KMT have now dropped this requirement. Which just leaves the demand for five legislative committees – which betray a fairly basic lack of understanding of the Legislature.

What is the role of the legislature?

There’s a clue in it’s name. The role of the legislature is to pass legislation. Of course, there is often a need to research new legislation, requiring that a legislative committee is set up. However, investigations into corruption are not the job of the legislature.

Taiwan has more branches of government than you can shake a stick at, and there are exactly two which have the constitutionally defined mandate to investigate these matters: The Judicial Yuan, and (oh no, not again) the Control Yuan.

Apart from the fact that you would hope that legislators would have a basic understanding of things like the constitution and the separation of powers between the various branches of government, the current batch of KMT legislators really should know this: just about the only thing the legislature did last year was to set up a committee to investigate the March 19th assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian. To noones surprise, this committee was found to be unconstitutional and was thus rendered virtually powerless (it didn’t have the right to access confidential information from the police/hospitals, nor could it force anyone to testify).

Of course, if the pan-Blues are sincere in their demands for these instances of corruption to be investigated (and they definitely are cases which need to be investigated), then they should be demanding that the Control Yuan sets up some investigative committees. Unfortunately, the Control Yuan has no members at the moment … because the Legislature has been blocking its nominations for the last 10 months.

So, to sum up: the premier is being blocked from his constitutional duty until he agrees to set up a set of unconstitutional committees to do the job of a branch of government which will be kept in constitutional limbo at least until the premier does the job he is being blocked from. Does that make sense?

Update: Well, Hsieh finally got to give his report on Tuesday, apologised for the Kaohsiung Thai worker riot, and then got into a wonderfully intelligent argument with his predecessor as Kaohsiung mayor Wu Den-yih.

* It’s a classic Taiwanese irony that the pan-Blues are complaining that the Premier is chosen by the President and not by the Legislature. The Legislature used to select the Premier, but that was changed over a decade ago by the KMT in one of their constitutional amendments … because they were worried about a DPP majority in the Legislature (but strangely not worried about a DPP president). Oops.

Anyone hoping for a major change in direction for the KMT under new chairman Ma Ying-Jeou will have been disappointed with Ma’s first few weeks, which have continued policies in line with his predecessor Lien Chan (the latest example, a failure to criticize this weeks legislative chaos – claiming it was normal ‘filibustering’ as happens in any democracy). However, it has become clear that Ma’s first priority is to consolidate his power in the KMT – which means deference to Lien, attempts to befriend PFP leader James Soong, and winning some measure of support from Wang Jin-pyng and the KMT legislators (who generally are much closer to Wang than Ma). In this climate, Ma is unlikely to do anything in the short-term that deviates too much from Lien’s policies (as this would be seen as implicit criticism of those policies).

One area that Ma can address though is in one of his strengths – publicity. Lien Chan had almost no charisma, and little understanding of the importance of good public relations, so there is plenty of room for improvement here. Ma has clearly identified the KMTs Achilles heel of being ‘more Chinese than Taiwanese’ (an issue that the DPP has successfully exploited over the last few years), and is doing his best to improve things:

Ma Ying-jeou, new leader of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang, has started a campaign to highlight the party’s historic links with the island and reconcile it with those who suffered under decades of repressive KMT rule.

The KMT party headquarters, widely seen as a symbol of its authoritarian past, yesterday became the scene of an unlikely memorial to two heroes of a local Taiwanese nationalist and democracy movement.

On Mr Ma’s orders, the KMT adorned the building with posters commemorating Chiang Wei-shui and Lee Yu-pang, who fought Japanese colonial rule of the island in the first four decades of the last century.

The campaign by Mr Ma – the popular Taipei mayor’s first such move since he won the KMT chairmanship in a landslide election – targets the party’s weak spot. Founded in China a century ago, the KMT established a one-party regime in Taiwan after fleeing to the island upon defeat by the communists in the civil war in 1945.

The KMT leader said Mr Chiang’s and Mr Lee’s early ties to Sun Yat-sen, founding father of the KMT, were proof of the party’s deep roots in Taiwan.

This is a smart move by Ma. Instead of letting the DPP lead the conversation into a simplistic ‘DPP=Taiwanese, KMT=Chinese’ argument, the KMT should be promoting themselves as a Taiwanese party who embrace their Chinese heritage. However, he’s skating close to some uncomfortable truths – apart from the tenuous links described above (there is no doubt that Chiang Wei-shui was a supporter of Sun Yat Sen, but there’s less evidence that the support was reciprocated), there’s another unpleasant fact:

He also apologised for persecution and repression under his party’s dictatorial former rule. Mr Lee was executed in 1952 for allegedly spying for communist China.

Just last month, while emphasising the historical links between the KMT and Taiwan, Ma praised Liao Chin-ping as a supporter of Sun Yat-sen … but he was killed in the KMTs darkest hour on Taiwan (the 2-28 massacre). As Oscar Wilde might have said: To kill one supporter may be regarded as a misfortune; to kill two looks like carelessness.

Ma’s initiative to promote the KMTs historical links to Taiwan is a positive one. However, he’ll have to accept that a lot of that history is not something that the KMT can be proud of.

In England, the ‘Silly Season’ is when Parliament is in recess, and so the newspapers need to look for silly stories to replace the normal discussion of political issues. In Taiwan, it starts when the Legislative session starts – because the legislators specialise in silly behaviour.

Thus, it was no real surprise that the first day of the latest session was punctuated by scuffles and water fights. The main item on the agenda, a policy report by Premier Frank Hsieh, didn’t happen because opposition legislators blocked the podium, and one enterprising individual even managed to rip up his speech.

One female KMT lawmaker splashed tea on the sleeves of Foreign Minister Mark Chen’s (陳唐山) suit, as scuffles broke out through the morning.

Unhappy that KMT lawmakers blocked the podium where the premier was scheduled to speak, DPP lawmakers decided to occupy the seat of the legislative speaker and rip up the KMT’s placards in one of the day’s more chaotic episodes.

The KMT lawmakers said they prevented the premier from speaking to draw attention to questionable measures and suspicions of impropriety emerging from recent controversies.

Those of you who despair of the behaviour of their democratically elected representatives will be relieved to know that most of them will be out of a job in under 3 years time when the number of legislators is halved (3 cheers for constitutional reform!).

In the meantime, I’m guessing the KMT will continue to come out on top in these fights: after all, when you’ve got an Olympic Taekwondo medal winner (Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) – Silver medal in Athens) in your team, the odds are stacked in your favour. (There’s plenty more political analysis over at Wandering to Tamshui)

Update: I don’t know quite how it happened, but a BBC article on G.W. Bush’s bathroom habits linked to this article. I guess anyone interested in presidential bowel movements would probably quite enjoy Taiwanese politics, so feel free to stick around if that’s where you’ve come from!

Congratulations to Michael Vaughan and the England team – who have just regained the Ashes for the first time since 1987.

England and Australia have battled for the Ashes since before Japan took control of Taiwan in the 19th century, but this series has arguably been the best of all time. With Australia and England acknowledged as the best and second best teams in world cricket, it was always going to be interesting, but it has surpassed everyones expectations. With 2 of the closest ever test matches, a draw which went down to the very last ball, and some amazing individual performance, the final result was in doubt right the way into the final session of the final day of the (total) 25 day contest.

What has this got to do with Taiwanese politics? Well … KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou was born in a British colony, so should appreciate a good cricket match. I’m sure he’d like to extend his congratulations too.

For those of you who have not understood a word of the above: Don’t worry. Normal programming will return soon.

Two months ago, Ma Ying-jeou beat Wang Jin-pyng to become the new chairman of the KMT. This weekend there’s an interesting contrast of news articles on the two men involved in that race. On Friday evening, Yahoo! Taiwan released a story on their website that (election winner) Ma Ying-jeou had been assassinated – which came as a bit of a surprise to the man himself:

The general manager of the Internet company, who was in the U.S. when the incident occurred, telephoned Ma to present the company’s deepest apologies.

The company promised to strengthen its internal management in order to avoid similar episode from occurring again in the future.

Ma stated that, since the company has taken steps to announce that it was at fault, he will not pursue the matter further. Ma expressed that the mistake did not cause him any inconvenience. “My mother did not even notice it,” he joked, adding that his bodyguards might have been troubled by it.

Meanwhile, loser Wang Jin-pyng has been the recipient of the sort of puff-piece in the Taipei Times usually reserved for the Greenest of independence supporters:

In addition to calligraphy, Wang is a talented athlete.

He was a senior-high-school champion in the long jump, triple jump, shot put and tennis. He was also captain of his university’s tennis team and won a bronze medal in inter-collegiate tennis competitions when he was in his senior year.

No matter how hectic or onerous things are at the legislature, Wang usually looks serene and calm. He attributes his serenity to inborn temperament.

Fake assassination stories and gratuitous praise for an election loser – who’d expect that in Taiwan?