Taiwan’s debt deserves attention

Taipei Times - archives

http://help.funp.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/funp/tools/tools_postbtn_script.png?cache=cache

Taiwan’s debt deserves attention

By Huang Juei-min 黃瑞明

Friday, Jan 29, 2010, Page 8

Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy, but what, you may ask, does that have to do with Taiwan?

A few months ago, Taiwan’s mainstream media were publishing anxious editorials and opinion pieces about how the nation was up to its ears in debt. Taiwan’s real national debt has reached NT$19 trillion (US$590 billion), and international ratings agencies have started cutting its credit ratings. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the government, and especially the Ministry of Finance, does not seem at all concerned.

How can the situation not be serious when each one of us bears a debt burden of NT$860,000 (US$27,000)? Once, when I was chatting about this with a colleague, he said: “However high the national debt may be, it won’t have any effect on ordinary people’s lives. Life will go on just as before.”

If people are so unconcerned, no wonder the media have stopped talking about it.

Germany is another country weighed down by debt. The German federal government responded to the financial and economic crisis by injecting relief funds of 1.6 trillion euro (US$2.28 trillion). This year alone, the country must pay 42 billion euro in interest — more than it spends on defense, education, science and culture combined. There is endless public debate about how to cope with such an enormous debt. Following last year’s general election, the Free Democratic Party, a minor party that favors making big tax cuts to stimulate investment and consumption, joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as a coalition partner, intent on carrying out its campaign promises.

This idea has provoked a backlash from German society, from university professors to the man and woman on the street. Everyone is worried that tax cuts will only make the country’s financial situation worse. Germany’s national debt is four times Taiwan’s, but it must be seen in relation to GDP. While Germany’s GDP is US$3.7 trillion, Taiwan’s is less than US$400 billion. If Germans are tearing their hair out over their national debt, how can people in Taiwan not be worried?

The root cause of Taiwan’s national debt is that we are bad at increasing revenue and curbing expenditure. The government squanders money on the one hand and cuts taxes willy-nilly on the other. A good example of squandering money is the more than NT$200 billion paid out every year in pensions for retired military personnel, public servants and teachers. As the number of retirees grows, and with people living longer, this burden can only get heavier. A little more than a year ago, I had occasion to put this point to then-minister of education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城).

Cheng answered frankly: “This is a serious problem, but it is not one that the Ministry of Education can solve.”

As the national debt keeps on growing, Taiwan’s credit rating is bound to keep on falling. Another result will, of course, be a big drop in the value of the NT dollar. When that happens, the government will have no choice but to make big cuts in public spending, and the result of that will be frequent protests, demonstrations and social unrest. Clearly, the national debt is going to have a very real influence on the lives of ordinary people.

Greece’s current predicament should serve as a warning. Its GDP is just a little less than that of Taiwan, but its national debt of 300 billion euro has the country gasping for breath. The problems mentioned above have already come into the open. The core problem in Greece is systemic corruption, especially in government. Falsification, cronyism and bribery are deeply rooted in Greek culture. Think about it, though — are Taiwanese any different?

Those who fail to foresee the future will have problems in the present. We should not make the mistake of thinking that the national debt will only bring grief to future generations. It is going to make the present generation suffer first.

Under the third-rate democracy we have in Taiwan, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government will of course keep papering over the cracks, putting the problem off until after he has been elected to a second term.

The worrying thing is this: while Greece has the EU and the IMF to back it up, whom will Taiwan look to when it reaches the verge of bankruptcy? Will we end up begging for money from China? It doesn’t matter which side of the political divide you stand on, that is a nightmare prospect for everyone in Taiwan.



Huang Juei-min is a law professor at Providence University.

TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG

侵害司法權 轉移馬無能

自由電子報 - 侵害司法權 轉移馬無能侵害司法權 轉移馬無能

記者劉志原／特稿

陳 聰明領軍的特偵組偵辦前第一家庭洗錢案，所提證據已讓台北地院重判扁珍無期徒刑，扁家罰金共八億元，扁仍遭押，理應已符合國民黨期待。但馬英九上台後，施 政滿意度大崩盤、選舉連連敗，國民黨檢討認為，都是陳聰明的錯，此時監院竟通過彈劾，似乎替馬政府轉移了施政無能焦點，此舉卻已然造成侵害司法權的爭議。

彈劾權是監委的法定職權，五權分立的憲政體制下，五院相輔相成、相互制衡，如果檢察官案子放水，該起訴不起訴、貪污收黑錢、喝花酒，監察院當然要重重地辦。

此次陳聰明遭彈劾的兩大理由，一是黃芳彥、二是魚翅宴，陳聰明與黃芳彥是舊識，他見黃芳彥時，還沒有扁案，目前所知的洗錢案，當時仍未爆發，黃芳彥仍非被告，後來黃芳彥在扁案爆發後潛逃美國，特偵組的確該檢討，但若要說這是陳聰明「縱放」、「有犯罪嫌疑」，實在太牽強。

至於魚翅宴，陳聰明是為與名嘴打好關係，但藍營名嘴「要吃又要人下台」，陳聰明只因未在第一時間說清楚詳情，即被痛批，落得遭彈劾。

吃過魚翅的藍營名嘴天天上節目，眼見扁已遭重判失去話題性，隨即鎖定陳聰明，不斷強調國民黨執政後的敗選，都是因馬英九未處理陳聰明。

國民黨檢討敗選也認定是「陳聰明的錯」，沒看到失業率居高不下、八八水災救災不力、平均薪資一再下降，名嘴為戲劇效果而激情演出，情有可原，但身負「整飭綱紀」、「超然」重責大任的監委大人難道也隨之起舞，甘於淪為服務政治的角色嗎？

如今陳聰明主動請辭，雖是監察權侵害司法權的結果，但未嘗不是件好事，馬英九政府失去了「陳聰明防護罩」，或許從今起只能全心為民生、拚經濟，沒有藉口再卸責了。

The backsliding of judicial reform

Taipei Times - archives

The backsliding of judicial reform

By Celia Llopis-jepsen 游思麗

Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010, Page 8 You’ve probably heard of the Hsichih Trio. What you probably haven’t heard is that this case and others like it helped precipitate one of the most important judicial reforms in Taiwan’s history — amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure in 2002.

As a result, should you now find yourself to be a defendant in a criminal case, you have rights in presenting your side of the story that the three young men arrested in 1991 did not have.

But those rights are not enough.

A case in point: Even now, a defendant in a civil case that goes to the Supreme Court is entitled to a public defender, but a defendant facing more serious criminal charges — even leading to the death penalty — is not.

There is no justification for this, but there is an explanation. Historically, the courts have presumed defendants in criminal cases to be guilty until proven innocent. Their rights, and the risk of wrongful conviction, were not a concern.

Legal reforms in the past 10 years have tried to change that, but this mentality is reflected in parts of the law to this day.

Last week, Freedom House lowered Taiwan’s civil liberties rating in its annual Freedom in the World report, citing in part the inadequate protection of defendants’ rights in criminal cases, and naming as an example a “high-profile murder case” — perhaps a reference to the Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順) or Hsu Tzu-chiang (徐自強) cases, both of which saw fresh convictions in retrials last year.

Let’s flesh this out a little. What we should say, and the reason Freedom House was right to lower its rating, is that despite a momentous overhaul of the courts eight years ago that was designed to address this problem, the institutional capacity to abuse defendants’ rights remains.

Recent proposals to amend the law further indicate that legal reform may take a turn for the worse. If the proposals from the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan proceed, we should no longer be concerned that reform has slowed; we should worry instead that it may be backsliding. The presumption of guilt seems to be gaining legitimacy again, despite years of efforts to root it out.

In 1999, disgust over cases like the Hsichih Trio came to a head. A landmark National Judicial Reform Congress that had been called to outline steps toward a fairer judiciary proposed divesting judges of their investigative powers and strengthening the position of the defendant in court.

Three years later, amendments to Articles 161 and 163 of the Code of Criminal Procedure were passed, and with that, Taiwan’s courts adopted a modified adversarial system. Before then, they used an inquisitorial system — often associated with continental Europe — rather than the adversarial system of Britain, the US and other places where English law has left its mark. Taiwan’s system now is a version of the latter.

The difference is this: Judges today are expected to listen impartially and passively to two sides of a case — one presented by the defense, one by the prosecution. (Before 2002, judges played the role of prosecutor, investigating the case themselves. Prosecutors indicted suspects, but did not have to attend court hearings.) The defense, meanwhile, is allowed to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses and question interpretations of forensic evidence.

The spirit of the change was that the prosecution and the defense should enjoy the same status in court and have the same opportunities to make their case, while the judge should not be in direct conflict with the defendant.

The inquisitorial system may work well in some countries, but it was not working well in Taiwan 10 years ago, when the country began mulling these changes.

Taiwan was a young democracy, only recently emerged from the world’s longest period of martial law; a country where judges were not required to have law degrees, but were trained by an authoritarian regime.

The shockingly weak case against the Hsichih Trio, among others, said it all: The courts could not be trusted to dispense even-handed justice.

For this reason, the year 2002 was a victory for judicial reform advocates. But it wasn’t a miracle. Changing the law took Taiwan a few years — but what about changing court culture?

Eight years down the line, defense lawyers are not always on an equal footing with prosecutors, while judges at times may slip out of their redefined roles. And as for the presumption of innocence, there is cause to believe that the Hsichih Trio, Chiou and Hsu are still at trial so many years after their cases began not because they have been proven to be guilty, but because they have not been proven to be innocent.

These are some of the obstacles the judiciary is still struggling with — and now the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan risk making the process even harder.

In October, the Judicial Yuan passed the Fair and Speedy Criminal Trials Act (刑事妥速審判法), which, if approved by the legislature, could prevent defendants who have been wrongfully detained for many years from receiving damages under the Compensation for Miscarriages of Justice Act (冤獄賠償法).

The draft law also seems to validate the presumption of guilt. For example, one provision states that not-guilty verdicts in long-running cases should be final if the defendant is found innocent at three separate High Court retrials. What critics rightly wonder is why a defendant should have to be found innocent three times to be acquitted.

The justice ministry, meanwhile, is mulling changes to the Criminal Code that are no better. These include, but are not limited to:

‧ Restrictions on “inappropriately” publicizing details of court cases (likely to have a chilling effect on journalists, civic groups and lawyers).

‧ Barring lawyers and defendants from “disobeying the orders of judges and prosecutors” or “speaking inappropriate words” to them.

‧ Extending the perjury law to encompass defendants, barring them from “concealing evidence” and threatening lawyers with up to seven years’ prison for abetting perjury.

‧ Barring lawyers from “harassing” witnesses.

(These changes are explained in the Taipei Times reports “MOJ proposal sparks concern among lawyers,” Dec. 18, page 1, and “Bar association attacks MOJ plans,” Jan. 5, page 3.)

The proposal has academics and lawyers crying foul, warning that the amendment would infringe on the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself, while intimidating lawyers out of putting together the best possible defense for their client.

Can the defense and prosecution enjoy equal footing if defendants and lawyers are bound under penalty of imprisonment to obey prosecutors’ “orders”?

The justice ministry and Judicial Yuan proposals may not threaten the distinct roles for judges and prosecutors set out under the adversarial system, but they could subvert the spirit of the system by validating the presumption of guilt and weakening defendants’ rights.

Articles 154 and 301 of the Code of Criminal Procedure state that every defendant shall be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, that guilt can only be proven through evidence and that absent this evidence, the defendant shall be acquitted.

Ask judicial reform experts what it will take for these principles to be applied consistently in Taiwan’s courts and some of them just shake their heads.

“A new generation of judges” is a common answer.

In other words, progress is not just a matter of changing the law — it takes time, too.

But in the meantime, is it too much to ask that the justice ministry and the Judicial Yuan refrain from making things worse?

臺灣有「可能」芬蘭化嗎？/廖東慶 作品 - hsutung5@gmail.com

Gmail - 臺灣有「可能」芬蘭化嗎？/廖東慶 作品 - hsutung5@gmail.com

http://help.funp.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/funp/tools/tools_postbtn_script.png?cache=cache臺灣有「可能」芬蘭化嗎？
美國學者季禮先生，以一篇非常特別的文章「臺灣芬蘭化」，

登上美國菁英决策刊物「外交事務」(Foreign Affairs)封面，這一篇文章，引起美國和臺灣及「中國」，熱烈的反應及討論，這一篇文章的中心點，筆者可以肯定這位季禮先生，是要幫歐巴馬總統解套，而不是完全對臺灣好為出發點，不過這位自由作家的美國學者季禮先生的文章和觀點，並不能解決臺海的政治紛爭，他主張美國對臺灣放手並停止對臺軍售、、、、等等，如果以上都成為事實的話，「中國」是不會放過這個百年難得一見的好時機，反而讓「中國」師出有名，以收復叛國一省的名義，而發動侵臺戰爭，還有隨後引來的美中軍事衝突，反而會促成「區域」戰爭的發生，這一點白宮國家首席安全顧問，比誰都清楚，「臺灣芬蘭化」根本就是一件完全不可能的事！
在二次大戰之前，芬蘭是個主權獨立的國家，但是又怕被蘇聯所併吞，也更怕被德國納粹攻佔下來，所以芬蘭領導人在政治上傾向親蘇聯為保護的靠山，德國納粹在開辟東線戰場的主要目標是蘇聯，而不是北歐地區的國家，更不是芬蘭，如果芬蘭在二次大戰時期，就被德國納粹攻佔下來，等到蘇聯大反擊的話，芬蘭也會無可避免的成為共產黨的附庸國，國家的主權就被掌握在蘇聯的手裡，不過幸虧德國並未攻佔芬蘭，所以蘇聯並沒有併吞芬蘭，是因為沒有師出有名的「藉口」，在歐洲的美英聯軍部隊在1944年6月6日登陸法國諾曼地登陸，在攻打德國納粹部隊的同時，美國也密切的注意蘇聯部隊的動向，同時蘇聯也急需要美國的軍事及民生的大力援助，所以在當時的情況而言，就算有意併吞芬蘭，也是心有餘而力不足。
從1945年再往後推到2010年，65年後的今天，這位季禮先生主張「臺灣芬蘭化」的學者，根本就不清楚，臺灣對美國而言，才是真正不可分割的一部份！因為臺灣和芬蘭不一樣的地方，就是臺灣並不是一個主權獨立的國家！美國國務院在2007年9月，對全球發佈聲明指出：中華民國或臺灣，並不是一個國家，當時的阿扁政府，根本就連反駁的動作都沒有。不但如此，美國國務院更在2008年9月，進一步對駐全球各國的美國大使館及領事館，發佈一項聲明，指出不能稱呼中華民國或者是中華民國在臺灣，而只能單單稱呼為臺灣，馬政府連一個屁都不敢放！美國國務院對外的任何發言，都是代表美國總統的心思意念！而且軍隊是主權的象徵，美國三軍4兵種，陸海空及陸戰隊，在1951年大批進駐臺灣及澎湖，到1979年才撤軍，但是並不代表美國失去擁有臺灣的主權，因為在1979年撤軍的同時，「臺灣關係法」開始實施，更尊定一個堅強而有力的事實，那就是臺灣是美國不可分割的一部份！
軍隊是代表一個國家主權的象徵，是不是事實可以在1997年香港回歸的7月1日的英中兩國交接的典禮上，看得一清二楚，在7月1日的凌晨零時之前，香港九龍駐紮的是英國三軍部隊，代表在地主權還是在英國的手裡，過了7月1日凌晨零時之後，「中國」人民解放軍的軍車，才敢通過關卡，進入香港及九龍等地，而在這時侯，香港九龍的主權正式回歸到「中國」的手裡，澳門回歸「中國」也是採取這個模式，派人民解放軍，進入澳門地區駐守，「中國」在1971年之後，對全世界說，臺灣是自古以來不可分割的一部份，這一句話可以從中聽得出來，「中國」自已說得很心虛，不但如此，也不敢說出臺灣的主權在「中國」的手裡，其中最主要的原因就是，「中國」的人民解放軍部隊，從來就沒有駐紮在臺灣及澎湖一天過，就連一分鐘或一秒鐘都沒有，不像美軍駐守臺灣及澎湖，長達有28年之久！
如果今天季禮先生是美國現任政府官員的話，而且又對外公開這篇有爭議性的「臺灣芬蘭化」文章，今天他早就被撤職，然後捲鋪蓋回家吃自己。在全世界191個國家之中，也只有美國敢說，中華民國或臺灣並不是一個國家！這是因為臺灣的主權真的是被掌握在美國國防部的手裡，也許你會問憑什麼？就是憑1945年之前，所制定的國際法及第二次大戰的戰爭法和太平洋戰爭法，請別忘了，在1945年8月15日，第二次世界大戰結束之日的4年多之後的1949年10月1日，「新中國」才成立，臺灣怎麽有可能會變成「新中國」的其中一部份呢？翻開歷史，是誰打敗了日本帝國，是美國在太平洋海戰中，消滅日本海軍聯合艦隊，也是美國對日本投下兩枚原子彈，才會讓日本天皇對美國提出無條件投降！中國戰區並不是主要戰場，「中華民國」之前打不過日軍，反而還差一點向日軍投降，幸好美國參戰，在後連共產黨也打不過，最後還是逃不過亡國的命運。
而且「臺灣芬蘭化」正是「中國」最喜歡解決臺灣最好的方法之一，但是「臺灣芬蘭化」和「臺灣關係法」完全相抵觸，不但白宮反對，美國國會也不會通過，美國國防部，更不用說了，更是絕對會反對到底，因為臺灣的安全是美國國防部在負責的，所以根本就不會同意的，最主要的原因就是臺灣並不是一個主權獨立的國家！不過沒有關係，只要改個名字，那就改成「中國芬蘭化」，只要「中國」喜歡的話，那就拿去用吧！請不要辜負季禮先生的一片苦心！
(全文完) (廖東慶/北美政治評論家)
(歡迎轉寄/轉貼/下載)

http://taiwan9.ning.com/profiles/message/listInbox?xg_source=msg_mes_private

Taipei Times - archivesIf you think this is cold, you don’t know what ‘cold’ really means

Taipei Times - archives

If you think this is cold, you don’t know what ‘cold’ really means By Ian Jack THE GUARDIAN , LONDON Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, Page 9 ‘[Today] we can view the external cold with far greater equanimity and mainly in terms of its disruptive effect on transport or its pathetic consequence for sheep.’ As a news item, the cold weather is seen fundamentally as a crisis of movement. Snow once again blocks a motorway. Flights are canceled and trains to the suburbs delayed. Pedestrians fall down on pavements. Gritters stand by across the country. But coldness itself — the threat that cold poses to human wellbeing? It hardly features. This may be because the sensation of being cold is hard to convey in pictures, but a more likely explanation to me is that many fewer people are as cold as they were, say, in the winter of 1947, and that coldness for most of us has retreated to the status of a historical memory because keeping warm is now so much easier. Predicting temperatures of minus 20˚C, the TV weatherman looks serious; he may even hunch his shoulders and act out a hammy “brrrr”; but our reaction is mainly a thrill that we should be living through such times. This isn’t new. Reflecting on his experience of dragging a sled through an Antarctic winter in 1911, Apsley Cherry-Garrard mocked the people he’d subsequently met who claimed to have endured similar cold: “Oh, we had minus 50˚C temperatures in Canada; they didn’t worry me.” And then, Garrard wrote: “You find that they had nice dry clothing, a nice night’s sleep in a nice aired bed, and had just walked out after lunch for a few minutes from a nice warm hut or an overheated train.” As an experience of cold, he continued, this could only be compared “to eating a vanilla ice with hot chocolate cream after an excellent dinner at Claridge’s.” Cherry-Garrard’s book, The Worst Journey in the World, must be among the best descriptions of cold ever written. The author was a member of Robert Falcon Scott’s polar expedition, but the “worst journey” in the title doesn’t apply to Scott’s fatal trip. Earlier — together with two men, Wilson and Bowers, who died with Scott — Cherry-Garrard spent five hellish weeks trudging the 225km to and from the breeding grounds of the emperor penguin, to fetch back eggs whose embryos, it was mistakenly thought, might contain evidence of the missing evolutionary link between fish and birds. They hauled their sled in almost total darkness, through blizzards and up and down crevasses and in temperatures that ranged from minus 40˚C to minus 57˚C. The sweat froze inside their clothes and the breath around their faces. Cherry-Garrard wondered why their tongues never froze — although did they protect them by keeping conversation to a minimum. As it was, “all my teeth, the nerves of which had been killed, split to pieces,” he wrote. Their skin peeled off or got frost-bitten if it came into the briefest contact with metal. Ice formed over the pages of Wilson’s notebook as soon as he opened it to write. Match after match was struck uselessly to light the primus stove that heated their diet of hot water and pemmican. Cherry-Garrard dreamed of tinned peaches in syrup and welcomed the notion of death. Other books can send a shiver through the reader. Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad, for example, tells us that immiserated German troops were so desperate for gloves that they killed and skinned stray dogs; and that later, when taken prisoner, they would sometimes stand together in a group at night with a blanket over their heads “hoping to sleep like horses ... to keep in some warmth from their breath.” Cherry-Garrard, however, writes vividly and memorably out of bitter personal experience and it was his book I thought of this week when we returned to a cold house where the central heating had in our absence gone kaput. I don’t mean that we were absurd in our self-pity; a house in north London isn’t a tent on Mount Erebus and there was no pemmican to be boiled. We settled in one room, lit a fire and made smart dashes to other parts of the house to fetch food and fuel. But the chill was noticeable — it affected our domestic behavior — and over the next two days we were returned to a time of the vest and the cardigan, when flannel and flannelette were indispensable textiles, when bathwater needed to be heated in pans, beds warmed well in advance by hot bottles, and the source of draughts identified and, where possible, stopped with a strip of felt. In other words, we’d moved away from the luxurious experience of cold as “a vanilla ice with hot chocolate cream” and an inch or two towards Cherry-Garrard’s extreme and prolonged discomfort. Hunched around our fire, it was easy to remember how this present scene had been a previous normality and how household life was once so much colder. “I would wake up in the morning and there would be ice on the inside of my bedroom window.” “I remember the first sound I heard every morning was mum scraping the ashes from the grate.” “Housewives used to have scorch marks down one side of their legs from sitting too close to the fire — they called it fire tartan.” “The furniture was arranged differently then — the chairs around the fire and then an awkward gap between them and the sideboard.” “Dad was a devil with the poker.” The revolution came, of course, with central heating. In the days when smoke still drifted from every household chimney and coal came to the door in sacks, my Latin teacher taught us the word “hypocaust.” Roman villas, he said, had a form of central heating concealed beneath their floors — the Romans being so advanced, and in this instance more advanced than we were, because heating systems that used radiators were in the 1950s (so far as we knew) confined to institutions such hospitals and schools that had boiler houses and neat pyramids of coke, supervised by men in clean brown overalls. And then within 30 years nearly every house was fitted with its miniature variant. Gas and oil replaced coke. Some people claimed to dislike it — it made houses “stuffy” — and placed saucers of water near radiators (as though they were pets) to act as makeshift humidifiers. But there was no stopping central heating’s advance. If the pill changed sexual behavior, then central heating did the same for the family, sending children to nest in warm bedrooms, permitting more frequent baths, redistributing the living room furniture. Entire houses, rather than just one or two rooms inside them, now glowed wastefully with heat. From this balmy atmosphere, fueled largely by imported gas, we can view the external cold with far greater equanimity and mainly in terms of its disruptive effect on transport or its pathetic consequence for sheep. Unless things go wrong, we don’t feel it, not as we used to do. And if things do go wrong, I recommend you pick up a copy of The Worst Journey in the World, which will make you thank God for even the coldest bedroom. In that sense, it is a very warming book. This story has been viewed 194 times.

Advertising

Copyright © 1999-2010 The Taipei Times. All rights reserv

Beef debacle teaches Ma a lesson

Taipei Times - archives

Beef debacle teaches Ma a lesson

By Ker Chien-ming 柯建銘

Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, Page 8 After two months of maneuvers by the ruling and opposition parties, the US beef affair has finally been brought to a close. The passage of a legal amendment banning imports of certain beef products from countries with a history of mad cow disease can be seen as a declaration of a new era of independence for the legislature, and a strong vote of no confidence in President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

Ma must learn to be humble and listen to the voice of the public instead of being blinded by his ever-more-absolute powers. He must realize that the US beef issue, and that of the proposed cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), have at least symbolic implications for Taiwan’s sovereignty, and we cannot allow that to be compromised through deals behind closed doors. The US beef affair should be a revelation for the Ma administration as it proceeds with preparations for an ECFA.

President Ma took on the concurrent post of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman in an attempt to control his party and the legislature. He had a dream of complete control of the government, but now it is time for him to wake up. Evidently being chairman of the KMT as well as president is no panacea.

Ma blames the US beef affair on poor communication and insufficient publicity, even naming Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) as responsible, but has avoided any suggestion that the National Security Council (NSC) might bear some political responsibility. He wants the executive and legislature to send a joint lobby group to the US, but doesn’t want to talk about how to improve communication with the legislature. Ma can’t see the forest for the trees, and his behavior reveals his tendency to shield his own shortcomings. Within the KMT, everyone is trying to blame someone else, with no one willing to accept responsibility.

With regard to constitutional government, the executive, having had its policy negated by the legislature, must now consider whether to resubmit it. If it does not, it means it accepts the legislature’s decision. With regard to the US beef issue itself, it means that Ma will have to think how to reopen talks with the US. As things stand, he has said that he will hold sincere consultations with the US side as soon as possible, but he has not proposed any concrete solution.

What he says now stands in contrast with earlier statements by NSC Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起), who said the Taiwan-US trade protocol took precedence over domestic law, and who tried to intimidate the legislature by suggesting that the US would respond with economic and trade reprisals. Su has only himself to blame for the legislature’s having countered the protocol by passing the amendment. All this shows that Ma and his national security team are poor negotiators and don’t know how to deal with the consequences of their own actions.

The only forward-­looking thing Ma said at his press conference was that he will look into setting up a comprehensive mechanism to handle communication between the executive and the legislature when executive departments are preparing treaties or legislation related to foreign relations such as the ECFA. Actually, the ECFA promises to be a replay of the US beef affair.

Ma has so far refused to consider a proposal by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and the Democratic Progressive Party to set up a group in the legislature devoted to monitoring developments in cross-strait ­relations, and he opposes establishing rules to govern the signing of cross-strait agreements. In fact the Constitution clearly states that the legislature has the power to deliberate and pass resolutions on such matters as declarations of war, armistices and draft treaties. The US beef protocol is such an issue, and so is the ECFA.

Ma’s current difficulties are, in part, a result of inadequacies in his own character and ability, but the main problem is that, submerged in his own unlimited and ever-expanding power, he is unaware of looming backlashes from public opinion. Ma needs to break free of the spell that power has cast over him. He needs to appreciate the public’s worries about the KMT’s monopoly on power and the people’s feelings of insecurity about national sovereignty issues, and he must learn to fully respect the legislature and pay heed to public opinion. Only then will he be able to reduce the tension and antagonism between the governing and opposition parties, and that, in turn, will be to Taiwan’s advantage in the perilous and complex course of cross-strait negotiations.



Ker Chien-ming is a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.

台灣印象2010中國抗議 衝著新一波對台軍售

台灣印象2010

20100111自由時報　　　中國抗議 衝著新一波對台軍售

20100111自由時報　　　 〔記者許紹軒／台北報導〕中國拉高美國對台軍售的抗議力度，我軍方將領分析，最近的愛三飛彈案根本不是新案，前年布希政府宣布售台愛三時，中國已經有過激烈抗議，研判美國應有另一波新對台軍售案要宣布，事先照會過北京，最初的抗議應是中國先聲奪人之舉。 將領指出，後來愛三舊購案由雷神與洛馬得標消息出現，中國借力使力加大抗議力度，應是順水推舟的策略運用，否則已成定局的軍購案開標要抗議，那是不是交貨或成軍都要抗議？但這種抗議又改變不了已經出售的事實，豈不很沒面子？ 激烈反愛三案 研判是項莊舞劍 去年底華盛頓郵報與洛杉磯時報就陸續放出美國即將宣布新對台軍售案訊息，我方解讀應是風向球，同時美方應該也會就這個問題照會中國。 至於對台軍售美中是否會共同研商？將領說，過去雷根政府對台曾有過六項保證，其中一項就是不會與中國磋商對台軍售內容，但事過數十年，美國國務院是否會因憂慮中國的反彈而放棄這項保證，我方其實也相當擔心。 將領指出，能在軍購案未宣布之前就將其扼殺，這才是中國的勝利，布希政府宣布的愛三飛彈購案已成定局，在這種購案的各階段不斷抗議，並不能改變結果，反而只是凸顯中國的無力感，恐有失中國自認的大國風範。 軍方合理判斷應該還會有新的軍售案公布，愛三舊案新進度只是個插曲，而且愛三本來就是雷神與洛馬的產品，美國決定要出售的同時就註定這兩家公司一定會得標，中方老早就知道，抗議只是項莊舞劍。

a-bian casters--cute young