040510jpnTimes

Taiwan opposition must swallow loss to live

By ALEXANDER K. YOUNG
Special to The Japan Times

NEW YORK -- On March 20 the governing Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) ticket of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu won re-election over the pan-blue ticket of Kuomintang (KMT) chairman Lien Chan and the People First Party (PFP) chairman James Soong by a narrow margin of 30,000 votes out of 13 million cast.

The media has focused on the razor-thin victory margin of 0.2 percent, yet Chen's capture of more than 50 percent of the votes was a miracle, considering the three-way battle back in 2000 among Chen, Lien and Soong. Then, Chen won only 39.3 percent against the combined 60 percent tally of the other two. This time Lien and Soong, both born in China, combined their forces to try to defeat Chen. The two-party pan-blue ticket (named after the color of the KMT emblem) was a strange anomaly born of political expediency.

The election took place only one day after Chen and Lu were wounded in a shooting while campaigning. Instead of accepting defeat gracefully, Lien and Soong began making wild accusations, all of which could be disproved or explained away. To cite just four accusations:

* The election was rigged. But in contrast to past KMT government-run elections, the recent election was the cleanest and most transparent in Taiwan's history; and the opposition made absolutely no challenges while the balloting and vote counting were all done in public.
* The shooting incident was staged by the Chen camp to capture sympathy votes. But four U.S. forensic and ballistic experts, after examining the evidence and Chen, concluded that the shooting indeed took place.
* Members of the armed forces were deprived of their right to vote. After the president was shot, a national security alert was issued following consultations between the Cabinet and national-security agencies to ascertain movements of China's armed forces. Only about one-ninth of Taiwan's forces were affected compared with one-sixth in the 1996 presidential election.
* There were a large number of invalid ballots. This was due to changes in the balloting law passed by the pan-blue controlled legislature last year and by the "Million Invalid Ballots Alliance" campaign against wealthy parties and candidate-dominated elections.

The pan-blue camp has made highly unreasonable demands: a vote recount, the participation of foreign forensic experts in the investigation of the shooting incident, and the annulment of the election.

Chen has shown utmost good will and agreed to all reasonable demands. He invited the pan-blues to file a valid lawsuit with the Taiwan High Court and to allow foreign forensic experts to participate in investigating the shooting incident. But he challenged Lien to hire the world's finest marksman to duplicate the alleged stunt. Chen would step down if the investigation proved that he staged the shooting, but if Lien refused to face the same risk, he should just shut up.

It is unfortunate that the disputes, which should be settled by the established legal mechanisms, have been politicized. Lien/Soong have demanded that Chen's votes -- but not theirs -- be subjected to a recount and that the shooting incident be investigated, not by independent police and judiciary but by a commission of the pan-blue controlled legislature. That would politicize the inquiry and would probably be unconstitutional.

Most unfortunate have been the undemocratic and extralegal actions. Instead of settling disputes by law before the courts, the pan-blues have resorted to mass protests and camp-downs in front of the presidential office and elsewhere, tying up traffic and disturbing the peace for weeks.

On April 10, a crowd estimated at about 100,000 demonstrated along the long avenue leading to the presidential office. Most of the protesters dispersed after dusk, but several thousand, carrying steel pipes and clubs, remained. The clash with riot police resulted in more than 150 arrests and dozens of wounded policemen. The pan-blues also mobilized 1,500 supporters to demonstrate near the U.S. Congress in Washington.

Soong even issued an ominous warning, threatening to mobilize 1 million supporters, with or without police permits, to disrupt President Chen's inauguration ceremony on May 20.

Leaders of the American business community in Taiwan are convinced that Taiwan's young democracy has survived a combination of an assassination attempt and a serious election dispute. But the illegal mass protests and demonstrations of violence will lead to social and political unrest and increased ethnic conflict between the pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp (DPP and Taiwan Solidarity Union supporters are mostly native Taiwanese) with the potential for increased Chinese interference in Taiwan's domestic affairs.

Lien and Soong should respect the will of the Taiwanese people and uphold democratic principles. Their undemocratic, even illegal, acts are diversionary tactics aimed at shifting attention from their responsibility for electoral defeats, especially in the case of Lien, who now has lost two presidential elections and one legislative poll.

The truth is that Taiwan has undergone dramatic changes in the past 15 years since President Lee Teng-hui embarked on a democratization program. The Chen/Lu ticket won by aligning itself with the new political reality of rising Taiwanese nationalism. After 400 years of alien rule, the people of Taiwan aspire to become the masters of their own house and determine the future of Taiwan, a right guaranteed by international law.

The long-oppressed native Taiwanese (permanent residents long before 1945 who now make up 86 percent of the 23 million population) saw their identity, culture and history trampled by the Chinese minority who escaped to Taiwan after 1945. The descendants of this minority, such as Lien and Soong, now head the KMT and the PFP.

After being treated as third-class citizens for half a century by the Chinese overlords, whose loyalty even today often lies with the Chinese Communist regime in Beijing, the Taiwanese want to build their own sovereign independent state. They acknowledge sharing a limited ethnic, cultural and historical past with China, but after experiencing democracy under Presidents Lee and Chen and seeing how China has betrayed democracy in Hong Kong, they have no desire to build a common nation with the Chinese. The Taiwanese adamantly deny Beijing's claim that Taiwan is a part of China.

The Lien/Soong pan-blue camp lost because it ran against the Taiwanese current. Lien and Soong, both American educated, ought to know better: Democracy means respect for the rule of law, for a pluralistic society, for a democratic decision-making process and for transparency. They should cease spreading wild rumors; call off illegal, violence-prone mass protests; respect the rule of law; and try to align themselves with the people of Taiwan to win on another occasion.
If not, the KMT and the PFP will be forsaken by the people of Taiwan, break up and disappear.

Alexander K. Young is professor emeritus, State University of New York
The Japan Times: May 10, 2004 (C) All rights reserved