For an insight into the depth of political analysis in the Chinese-language press about Taiwan, head on over to ESWN for an article about the ‘missing government in Taiwan’. The article he translates is basically an anti-Chen Shui Bian rant with little or no facts to back it up, and is, unfortunately, pretty indicative of the level of discourse here in Taiwan. Now go and read Michael Turton’s excellent rebuttal, to show how fact-free it really is.

A few points that sprang out at me in addition to Michael’s comments:

• The basic premise ‘The government of Taiwan is MIA’ is actually painfully true. Literally speaking it’s true (one of the 5 branches of government has been inactive for 5 months now), and pragmatically speaking it’s also pretty true (there has been such a deadlock between the KMT-controlled legislature and the DPP-controlled executive that a record low number of pieces of legislation have been passed). This deadlock, caused by an inability of the Greens and Blues to find any middle ground goes to the core of the political problem in Taiwan. However, because it’s a murky issue (with blame on both sides), it doesn’t fit in to the anti-DPP screed which ESWN reproduced.
• How can anyone start a paragraph with the sentence The “old ten great projects” included items such as the CKS airport, and not follow up with an analysis of the built-in nepotism of those projects (which were started by CKS’s son)? I doubt the writer noticed the irony. I don’t think anyone would dispute that those ten projects were very beneficial to Taiwan’s development – but you’d have to be incredibly naive to think they didn’t benefit those in power (and their friends) more. Of course, the level of public scrutiny of projects started while the country was under martial law compared to the new projects (started in a fully democratic society) is incomparable.

Finally, in ESWN’s disclaimer (“It wasn’t written by me, and I don’t really know anything about Taiwan anyway”), he makes the odd claim:

If they think that universal suffrage will solve all problems, then they are quite wrong; it had better be universal suffrage with some attention against the invasion of special interests beforehand or else it will be too late afterwards.

While I agree that universal suffrage isn’t a magic cure, I think he’s got this completely wrong. The one-party rule of the KMT was an invasion of special interests – and democracy (along with a free press which allows Nan Fang-shuo to write articles like this) is the only cure that I can think of. Public scrutiny and an ability to vote out the worst offenders is the best antidote to corruption – it takes time, and it’s imperfect, but it does work.

Politics was back to normal in Taiwan yesterday, with plenty of politicians trying to embarrass themselves. It’s hard to know which one is the most impressive:

• Legislator Li Ao (a man who can make other Taiwanese politicians look moderate) tries to flog a dead horse by claiming that President Chen Shui-bian was trying to assassinate his VP Annette Lu last year. It seems a mysterious man gave him a top secret CIA report which confirms this. How the CIA came across this information is unclear … partly because he refused to hand over the report to anyone apart from Annette Lu.
• Wang Yu-cheng – a Taipei City councillor – faked a video claiming that a mortuary was reselling funeral offerings to nearby restaurants. This little scandal has been going on for a few days, and it seems to have reached its conclusion with him being kicked out of his party, with the promise of litigation to follow. Was the fact that his friend owns a competing mortuary a factor? (more at ESWN, and INDIAC)
• An excellent bit of political grandstanding by ‘Aboriginal’ legislator May Chin – who is visiting the (in)famous Yasukuni Shrine in Japan to demand that the names of Taiwanese Aboriginals are removed. This is a reaction to the idiotic visit of the TSU Chairman Shu Chin-chiang to the Shrine to honour the Taiwanese war dead a couple of months ago (which, in turn, was a reaction to Lien Chan’s trip to China).
• Three new members were added to the cabinet today. Two of them failed to get elected to the legislature last December. If the cabinet is made up of people who aren’t competent enough to become legislators, then this country is in deep trouble.

Personal Note: I’m off on my holidays for a fortnight … so things will be quiet here for a while.

Today is a good day for Taiwanese politics – the National Assembly has finally approved the Constitutional amendments that were proposed last year. The vote went as expected – with 249 out of the 300 votes being for the amendments, comfortably over the 75% threshold required. Amazingly, this is the 7th set of amendments to be made to the constitution in the last 15 years (with more promised in 2008) – which goes to show how difficult it is to transform yourself from a corrupt dictatorship of 1 billion people to an open democracy of 23 million.

The major effects of this round of amendments are:

• The Legislature (the ‘parliament’ of Taiwan) has been reformed and reduced in size. This will take effect after the next Legislative elections (in just under 3 years). Hopefully, this will mean more legislation and less fist-fights from 2008 on.
• The National Assembly has been consigned to the dustbin of history. While it may have been an important body for governing China, it has never been anything other than an undemocratic joke on Taiwan. It’s passing will not be mourned.
• Taiwan now has a rational process for future changes to the constitution. However, it is worth noting that the new rules probably make it harder to pass constitutional reform in Taiwan than anywhere else in the world.

There are bound to be a few complaints from the smaller parties over the next few days (in particular they have the right to ask for a 2nd round of voting – which will be refused), but they can now be happily ignored.

What happens next?

For DPP politicians, this isn’t the end … it’s just the beginning. Chen Shuibian has based his presidency around reforming the constitution – and he’s already got plenty of plans for what needs to be changed next:

That is “an epoch-making change,” President Chen was quoted as saying, “and that paves the way for the second phase of constitutional reform.”

The president will make a statement when the amendment is adopted, Yu said.

Under the new reform, Yu said, President Chen wishes to make amendments to the constitution on the separation of powers, system of government, legislation procedure, provincial government of Taiwan, voting age, conscription, rights of labor, and rights of the aborigines.

In particular, President Chen wants to establish a better system of government, Yu said. A presidential system of government is preferred.

The existing five-power government may have to shed the two powers of control and examination. The provincial government is likely to be abolished and the voting age lowered to 18.

There will be a change in the existing conscription system, while rights of labor and the aborigines will be written into the constitution.

When the new phase of reform is completed, Yu cited President Chen as saying, the nation will be able to have a constitution that is up to date, tailor-made and practical by 2008.

Of course, the chances of all these reforms being done by 2008 are practically zero. A president can dream though …

One of the overriding factors in the race for the Chairmanship of the KMT has been the influence of current chairman Lien Chan. A race which should have been a simple head-to-head between Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou and Legislature speaker Wang Jin-pyng has instead revolved around Lien Chan: will he run again? will he endorse one of the candidates? how will Wang & Ma show their ‘loyalty’ to Lien?

You could put this down to simple megalomania on the part of Lien Chan: if he’s going to give up his position of power, then he wants to go out as the centre of attention – with as much praise and adulation from the KMT faithful as possible. However, a more concrete reason is a nervousness about generational change inside the KMT.

Lien Chan will be the last KMT Chairman who can remember life in mainland China under the KMT; as he and his mainland colleagues slowly lose their grip on the KMT, the question is “Will the next generation have the same commitment to the concept of China?”. The clearest example of this generational friction was seen 2 days ago when Ma Ying-jeou’s father pleaded with his son not to stand:

“If Mayor Ma will not give up his candidacy, I think I will commit suicide,” retired general Ma Ho-ling (馬鶴凌) said in a TV interview yesterday.

If a father can’t trust his son, it’s not surprising that the KMT Chairman is having trouble trusting his successor.

Lien’s plan

So, what could Lien do to ensure his ‘vision’ for the KMT continues? One obvious option is to run again – he’d be almost certain to win in a race against Ma, and could then comfortably control the KMT direction for the next 4 years. The other option is to get a commitment from both candidates to accept his direction for the KMT, and then ensure he retains enough behind-the-scenes control to enfore it.

Yesterday, it looked like Lien was going for the second option:

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) both pledged to follow Lien’s path on cross-strait relations and other issues if elected to replace him in July.

Presenting their views in a forum ordered by Lien that many saw as a prelude to the battle for the party’s top spot, the two KMT vice chairmen ruled out the island’s formal declaration of independence from China, similar to the view expressed by Lien when he met with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in April.

Today, it’s looking increasingly as though Lien will not run, but that the next KMT chairman will have little ability to make true reforms in the KMT, or to change it’s political direction.

Update: Three excellent essays on the KMT election by johnd here (1 2 3):

But the Kuo Min Tang is not most parties. There’s an enormous weight of history, thousands of years deep, of mostly unedifying precedents imported from across the Straits, that keeps this party awake late into the night howling at the moon.

The National Assembly has finally decided when it will get round to doing what it was elected to do: it will vote on the constitutional amendments next Tuesday. However, if they don’t get the result they want at that time, they might do it all again:

On the other hand, the presidium decided to make it possible for another voting, if the rubber stamps turn unfaithful. Should a serious fault occur in the voting, the presidium would meet to decide on a request for a second voting that is endorsed by at least 30 deputies, a National Assembly spokesman said.

Is this fair? Probably not, but at least it’s constitutional. This just seems to be one more step by the National Assembly to prove what a waste of time and money it is, so justifying it’s own abolition.

Idiot of the day award yesterday went to Annie Lee:

Although Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) presidium member Annie Lee (李安妮) said that the assembly should vote on each article of the amendment package separately, the presidium ruled that the vote should apply to the package as a whole, in accordance with the Statute Governing the Operation of the National Assembly (國大職權行使法).

Annie seems to think that because her Daddy used to run the country, she can happily ignore the rules and decide for herself what the National Assembly should be doing. The role of this assembly has been clearly defined for over 6 months now – trying to change the rules at the last minute just because you don’t like them is illegal, unconstitutional, and downright stupid.

The (hopefully) last ever National Assembly started yesterday in YangMingShan. The 300 members only job is to vote once on a package of constitutional reforms; given that they don’t even have to decide how they are going to vote (their parties have told their members how to vote), this is a job that trained monkeys could do pretty reliably in less than a day. They wouldn’t do it with the same style as Taiwanese politicians though …

The three members of the ‘Democratic Action Alliance’ took first prize for stupid behaviour on day one:

Chang, Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) and Huang Kuang-kuo (黃光國) announced on the first day of the National Assembly session that they were quitting and accused major political parties of perfunctorily preparing the constitutional amendment package last year under populist pressure without due deliberation.

So the grand plan of this party of nobodies is that each day the three members will quit their posts – to be replaced by three new members the following day. They are doing this to protest the fact that these amendments are popular.

Chang claimed that only 19 percent of the public supports the amendment package, while more than three-quarters refuse to endorse it.

… or perhaps they’re doing it because these amendments are unpopular. They seem to be claiming it both ways. However, their principled stand did have some limits:

They, however, joined other deputies in taking a group picture to commemorate the inauguration of the last National Assembly and attending a sumptuous lunch.

Food before principles, it would seem. Assuming that this is a foretaste of more idiotic behaviour, some members have taken action:

To get all deputies to behave, the lady deputies of the ruling party issued their “ten commandments” warning against drinking bouts, night parties, and above all, exhibitionism.

It isn’t clear whether fistfights are banned under this edict …

But will the vote go through?

All this moronic behaviour does detract from the serious business of voting. Despite a last minute panic by the DPP, it is looking likely that the two major parties will enforce their party line properly – and so the ammendments will succeed. Both the DPP & KMT have promised to expel any members who vote against the bill – and the KMT have already removed one candidate who had spoken out against the amendments. This should ensure that the 75% vote required to pass the amendments will be acheived quite comfortably. Unfortunately, nothing is certain in Taiwanese politics …

Update: Day 2

The China Post has an excellent article on the continued misbehaviour of the National Assembly members. You’ve got to admire an article which starts like this:

Many of 300 National Assembly deputies turned megalomaniac yesterday, conveniently forgetting that they are in fact just rubber stamps.

2 Days now gone – and they’ve still acheived absolutely nothing

ESWN has translated an excellent article by Taiwan-born acadamic Lung Ying-tai about how the Taiwanese view their future (original article here, in Simplified Chinese). The central premise is one I agree with completely: although there is a huge spectrum of opinions in Taiwan, for most people the central issue is guaranteeing their basic freedoms – not abstract issues about independence or reunification.

These people of Taiwan, like any other group of people in the world, yearn for social peace, economic stability, personal happiness and protection of individual rights under the law. But because they have lived through colonial and totalitarian rules, they are untrusting and contemptuous of those impressive-sounding grand narratives. Instead, they care about freedom of speech and thought, they are concerned about social justice and care for the socially vulnerable, and they want that the government should not invade their privacy and individual rights.

My main quibble with the article was that it idealises Taiwan’s system: implying a perfectly run democracy, with no corruption and an absolute trust in the rule of law (although he does provide a caveat at the end). Although this is a system that Taiwan is working towards, there is still some way to go … which makes the main point of the article all the more amazing: this article was published in the Chinese Youth Daily – a paper controlled by the Chinese Communist Youth League.

That an official CCP paper would promote a clear unbiased perspective of what Taiwanese people think – while glossing over the imperfections in Taiwan’s system – is very encouraging. Now we just need the rest of the Chinese media, the Taiwanese media, the CCP politicians, and the Taiwanese politicians to follow suit, and there might just be some chance for progress …

It seems that the DPP are getting to grips with the important issues facing Taiwan:

Three ruling Democratic Progressive Party legislators launched a campaign yesterday calling on Taiwanese baseball fans to email an appeal to the New York Yankees to keep Taiwanese pitcher Wang Chien-ming in their lineup.

Every Taiwanese baseball fan should email a letter to the public relations staff and coaches of the Yankees to express their hope of seeing Wang remain in the major leagues, said Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), in response to reports indicating that the team is considering sending Wang back to the Columbus Clippers, a triple-A affiliate farm team of the Yankees.

Wang’s recent success has been big news in Taiwan recently. I am sure that these three legislators are indeed avid baseball supporters – not engaging in a spot of cheap populism at all.

The concept of keeping politics out of sports doesn’t seem to apply in Taiwan: the KMT were quick to nominate Olympic taekwondo silver medal winner Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) into the legislature last year. Then again, given the number of fights in the legislature, having a taekwondo expert on your side has plenty of practical benefits too …

The election for the next KMT chairman has taken a back seat in recent weeks to visits to China and National Assembly elections. However, with Ma Ying-jeou starting his signature drive today, there have been some interesting developments, and there’s still one big question hanging over it all.

Voting requirements settled

The issue of who will be allowed to vote was finally settled by the KMT central standing committee:

Wang wanted to enable all members to vote, while the Chinese-born mayor insisted the eligibility be awarded to only those who have paid their membership dues in full.

According to Lien’s compromise, the Kuomintang would continue urging all those members with dues in arrears to make them up before July 16 but anyone whose party rights have not been suspended on or before that day can vote.

That means all Kuomintang members are qualified, if no suspension is effected. One of the party rights is that of election.

The fact that virtually all the 1 million KMT members will be allowed to vote is a big win for Wang Jin-pyng; the general consensus is that Wang is more popular among the ‘rank-and-file’ members, while Ma Ying-jeou is more popular with the older voters (who don’t pay membership dues, so were always going to be eligible to vote). Allowing everyone to vote seems to have made Wang the favourite, except for one open issue …

Will Lien run?

The big question hanging over this race is “what will Lien Chan do?”. Although he has repeatedly said he’s not really interested in running again, the effect of each of those statements has been to increase the chorus of loyal KMT supporter calling for him to run to ‘ensure party unity’. The two contenders have been forced to do a delicate dance to show their loyalty to Lien while trying to replace him; again Wang has won this competition by saying categorically that he will withdraw from the race if Lien decides to run.

Ma, however, has tried to suggest that Lien should be given an honorary chairmanship, in recognition of the significant contributions that Lien has made to the KMT.

In light of all this uncritical loyalty being aimed at Lien Chan recently, it’s worth noting what those “significant contributions” might be. Here’s my list:

• Coming a distant 3rd in the 2000 presidential election – first KMT candidate to lose the presidency.
• A big loss in the 2001 legislative elections – for the first time the KMT no longer had an absolute majority, and was no longer the largest party.
• Losing the 2004 presidential election – after setting up an ‘unbeatable’ ticket with James Soong.
• Better than expected performance in the 2004 legislative elections. Still not the largest party though.
• Poor showing in 2005 National Assembly elections.
• Failed to push through a long-talked about merger between the KMT and PFP.
• Led the richest political party in the world (est. US$2.5 billion in 2001) to a point where it had to lay off half its staff, and couldn’t afford to pay the other half
• Led a month-long protest against the 2004 presidential election. Lost 2 separate lawsuits against the election. Still hasn’t acknowledged that he lost.
• Went on a trip to China. Shook hands with someone famous.

As you might guess, I’m not a big fan of Lien Chan. I believe it will be an unmitigated disaster for the KMT (and so also Taiwan) if he stays on as chairman. It would alienate Ma and his supporters, remove any chance for serious reform in the KMT for the next 4 years, and ensure the KMT continues its petty-minded obstructionist behaviour. In other words, I fully expect Lien Chan to decide to stand again and win.

A week is a long time in politics. In Taiwan, half a week is enough for a law to be passed, one of the parties that passed the law to then demand that law be overturned, and then for a mass boycott by the other parties.
Friday:

The Legislative Yuan [with DPP support] passed a law governing the operation of the National Assembly yesterday that requires a three-quarter majority vote for the passage of any constitutional amendments.

Sunday:

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday decided to overturn legislation adopted on Friday requiring approval from at least three fourths of the National Assembly (NA) members to pass any constitutional amendment.

Monday:

At the request of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Wang Jin-pyng, president of the Legislative Yuan, called an interparty meeting for consultation, which was boycotted by all other parties.

This is basically last minute nerves about the Constitutional reform which is expected to be passed following last weeks National Assembly elections. In principal, 83% of the elected NA members should support the reform – comfortably over the 75% threshold mandated in last Friday’s law; however, the worry is that some DPP/KMT members will vote against party policy. Given that many of the members will be voting themselves out of a job in 3 years time (due to the proposed halving in size of the legislature), this is a serious worry. However, the current ‘headless chicken’ behaviour of the DPP is no more likely to help things than the sulky “I’m not talking to you” attitude of the KMT.

Update Tuesday:
A slanging match in the Legislature as the DPP try to force a review of the law. It gets voted down (twice) – but not before a few DPP legislators have insulted other DPP members and the premier. I’m looking forward to the threat of a constitutional ruling on the law next …