Hille at FT Times does it again

I haven't discussed the foreign media portrayals of Taiwan in over a month, and here Kathrin Hille at the Financial Times checks in with another bit of anti-Chen screed yesterday. The opening paragraphs are priceless:

A group of prominent supporters of Taiwan’s ruling party has urged Chen Shui-bian, president, to step down over corruption scandals implicating members of his family and his administration, creating fresh political uncertainty just weeks after Mr Chen survived an opposition attempt to unseat him.

Note how the article is entitled Taiwan’s ruling party calls for Chen to quit. Not Leading intellectuals call on Chen to Quit which would be a more accurate depiction of the information contained therein. I also like the last clause there just weeks after Mr Chen survived an opposition attempt to unseat him, written as if the issue was somehow in doubt, with no hint that there was never any question of the recall vote succeeding. A sad exaggeration of reality.

It is the first time that part of Mr Chen’s own camp has withdrawn its backing for him. The appeal was lodged by 15 professors and former dissidents, many of whom fought for democracy alongside leading Democratic Progressive party politicians in the 1980s.

There are multiple problems here -- a part of Mr. Chen's own camp has "withdrawn" its support for him before -- Chen created numerous enemies within the DPP when he became the candidate for President in 2000. Some of them, like Hsu Hsin-liang, resented Chen's ascendancy so much that they left the party. Are the group of 15 really all DPP supporters? We'll see a little further down....

“As he has already lost his moral authority and the trust of the people, we appeal to President Chen to seriously consider resigning from this post,” the group said in a manifesto published at the weekend, which has already attracted more than 10,000 signatures.

She then cites the manifesto. The Taipei Times had a good response to this today, from a media watcher who castigates the lack of evidence submitted by the group:

From this perspective, the view that the president should step down is unconvincing and, taking a more comprehensive view, also unrealistic. According to the media, Chen is being asked to resign because "he has lost his moral prestige and the public's trust." This is a subjective assessment containing no convincing arguments based on fact.

What's worse, one of the people behind the signature drive said on a call-in TV-show that the Presidential Office has become a center of lies and fraud and that the president "is but a dog with legal training." Such defamatory language has nothing to do with convincing arguments.

Well put, and it is good to see someone complain about the lack of facticity in the attacks on Chen. Hille goes on to strike fear into the heart of moderate businessmen everywhere, commenting that....

The development adds fresh uncertainty to the government’s plans to relax restrictions on cross-Strait trade and investment, which are opposed by radical pro-independence forces.

Those "radical" pro-independence forces support curbs on trade and investment with the mainland. Actually, that was the position of the KMT for three decades. Perhaps the issue is more complex than a label like "radical pro-independence" can encompass. But then Hille is not about complexities, she is about adjectives:

The support ratings of both Mr Chen and the DPP have plummeted in the past year following revelations of rampant corruption among people close to the president.

Not just corruption -- rampant corruption (where's the editor in all this?). Hmmm....if a US$185,000 coupon deal is "rampant corruption," I wonder what she would call a US$400 million kickback? Think words would fail her? As the editorial above noted of the "Pan-Green supporters" Hille referred to:

The traces of political manipulation are everywhere to be seen. First, an academic at the Academia Sinica and one of the drafters of the statement who is definitely not a pan-green supporter was described as standing close to the pan-green camp, because both the media and the supporters of the party-state complex like to see pan-green supporters lashing out at their own camp.

A China Post article on the issue is here. The article notes:

But lawmaker Lee Chun-yi, who represents law makers from the DPP's Welfare State faction, labeled the academics "egg heads working in an ivory tower".

"They don't understand the kind of political crisis that could be triggered by Chen's resignation," Lee said. "By refusing to quit and staying in the post, the president is also showing he is taking his responsibility in history."

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