Why Chen Made the Martial Law Comment

Last week President Chen intimated that he was considering martial law as a possible alternative to handle the KMT's lawlessness in refusing to obey the regulations for elections promulgated by the CEC. This comment was widely disparaged by observers on all sides of the political debates.

I can only speculate, but this paragraph from Willy Lam's recent piece on the Kitty Hawk affair may offer a clue:

A Beijing source close to the Taiwan policy establishment said the CMC and the Communist Party’s Leading Group on Taiwan Affairs—which was also headed by Hu—were worried about possible “tricks” played by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the pro-independence ruling party in Taiwan, in the run-up to the presidential elections scheduled for next March. The source said that Beijing was most worried that the Taiwan army might engineer a “military crisis” with the PLA, which would then serve as a pretext for the DPP administration to postpone the elections or even to impose martial law. Last Sunday, Taiwanese President and DPP Chairman Chen Shui-bian indicated that proclaiming martial law was an option if the opposition Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party) continues to side-step electoral procedures for the upcoming Legislative Yuan elections (Taipei Times, November 27). While Chen later withdrew his threat, Beijing remained concerned that the DPP leadership might again resort to wild cards given the fact that the KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou has consistently outpolled the DPP’s Frank Hsieh in island-wide surveys.

It could be that Chen was simply trying to yank the PRC's chain, teasing them with the prospect of "tricks." He must have found it personally hilarious, but it certainly wasn't funny to those of us listening on the outside.

This paragraph also shows the extent to which accusations that Chen is a "dictator" who rules by dirty tricks that the KMT routinely makes are simply extensions of the Communist line on Taiwan. The KMT propaganda playbook is entirely subsumed into the Chinese one, and the two cannot be told apart. The idea that Taiwan would foment a military confrontation with China during an election is sheer insanity, as is the suggestion that Chen can or would declare martial law, or postpone the election -- though the latter claim is a common complaint among internet pro-China trolls, and among the weirder fringes of the KMT.

The last line of Lam's paragraph reaches a new pinnacle of absurdity.

.....given the fact that the KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou has consistently outpolled the DPP’s Frank Hsieh in island-wide surveys.

You'd have to be inhaling some pretty strong KMT crack to imagine that President Chen pays attention to the polls from pro-KMT newspapers, which everyone knows to be worthless, or would base policy moves on them. Lam also fails to inform his audience that such polls are from pro-KMT papers -- but that's pretty much the norm in our global media.

UPDATE: Here's what he really said...link is here...
[Taiwan]