Some Taiwan Duck?

The American president’s popularity is the envy of his Taiwan counterpart. If George W. Bush is considered a lame duck with a 40% approval rate, then Chen Shui-bian, who only received 17% support in one recent poll, should have been a dead duck. Far from it. When Taiwan’s legislature next Tuesday votes on a possible recall referendum on the president, Mr. Chen should have no problem sailing through the storm safely.Undoubtedly, this is the most difficult time for Mr. Chen since he was elected president of the island democracy six years ago. His son-in-law was detained on suspicion of insider-trading last month. His wife was accused by the opposition of accepting gift vouchers from a department store. Two of his aides resigned pending corruption investigations. But no one has been officially charged. And all of the accused claim their innocence. Most importantly, no evidence has shown Mr. Chen was involved with any of these alleged wrongdoings.The main opposition party, Kuomintang, and its junior partner, the People’s First Party, enjoying a slim majority at the Legislative Yuan, or parliament, immediately launched recall proceedings last week. If two-thirds of legislators approve a recall, a referendum would go forward. If the referendum has at least a 50% turnout and half of the voters endorse a recall, Mr. Chen would have to step down. However, unless groundbreaking evidence exposing Mr. Chen’s wrongdoings emerges before the vote next Tuesday, there’s no chance of enough ruling Democratic Progressive Party legislators crossing the aisle to vote for a referendum.On the surface, the attempt to recall Mr. Chen, like the almost-certain impeachment of Richard Nixon and the actual impeachment of Bill Clinton, seems to be a good statement of a democratic mechanism holding its leaders accountable. There’s a fundamental difference between what happened in America and what’s unfolding in Taiwan, however. Both Nixon and Mr. Clinton actually broke the laws and Congress was reacting to a largely legal issue. In the case of Mr. Chen, however, instead of being treated as “innocent until proven guilty,” the KMT is applying the principle of “guilty until proven innocent.”The KMT has jumped the gun. If Mr. Chen were to be found guilty of wrongdoing by the judiciary, he would deserve to be impeached and brought to justice. However, Mr. Chen hasn’t broken any law, and the opposition is trying to pull him down purely as a political issue. While politics is always politics and there’s nothing wrong with the opposition trying to evict Mr. Chen, the KMT would be much less hypocritical if it admitted so.The problem of the KMT stems from its failure to come to terms with a simple fact of life: It has lost. After decades of monopolized power, the KMT was voted out by the people twice, in the presidential elections in 2000 and in 2004. The KMT doesn’t truly recognize the legitimacy of the DPP administration. Its obstructionist strategy has not only paralyzed normal business in the legislature (e.g., the American arms purchase package has been blocked more than 50 times), it’s even willing to sleep with a bigger enemy in order to belittle Mr. Chen. Following the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and ignoring the real source of threats to Taiwan, the KMT has joined hands with the Chinese Communist Party, its historical archrival, to battle the DPP. This is extreme partisan politics at the expense of Taiwan’s national interests.Interestingly, Beijing hasn’t ordered its propaganda machines to amplify the troubles of the man it considers public enemy no. 1. In the wake of its own scandal – the dismissal of the deputy mayor of Beijing for “corruption and degeneracy”- Beijing certainly doesn’t want its people to start comparing notes and realize, in the “renegade” province, how powerful the opposition and the press are in hammering the elected leadership, elements the mainland lacks.Washington, arguably the most important player across the Taiwan Strait, has shown some unexpected warm support for the embattled president who greatly irritated America by scrapping the National Unification Council earlier this year.Soon after Mr. Chen reiterated the “4 Nos” to the visiting American Institute in Taiwan chairman, Raymond Burghardt – not to declare independence, not to change the national name, not to push for inclusion of sovereignty themes in the constitution, and not to promote a referendum to change the status quo regarding independence and unification – the State Department issued a statement on June 8 saying that America “is pleased” and welcomed his reaffirmation of the pledges, which “are a cornerstone of cross-Strait peace and stability.”Even though I find the characterization of the “4 Nos” totally ridiculous (a cornerstone of cross-Strait peace and stability has always been the Seventh Fleet), it’s a rare but nice gesture from Foggy Bottom to Mr. Chen, amid his troubles at home.Mr. Chen, repeating his pledges to reassure the Americans at this juncture, has once again displayed his political flexibility in making compromises if necessary. However, his vice president, Annette Lu, a loose cannon who would succeed Mr. Chen if he is recalled, would be even more difficult to predict. The devil you know is better than the one you don’t, Washington must have thought.Mr. Liu, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association and general manager of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, is a Washington-based columnist.

Some Taiwan Duck?

Some Taiwan Duck?

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