Election Round Up: Tsai announcing candidacy... 11 months from Armageddon

Party time at the old Da-an Train Station outside Houli.

Couple of key events for the election next year. First, Tsai Ing-wen, DPP Chairman, declared her candidacy for presidency. She announced on Facebook that she'd enter the primary to become the DPP's presidential candidate, but since she's the party leader and the shoo-in candidate. Way cool moment: announced on Facebook, where she has well over a million followers. Several DPPers were complaining about the party's primary, which has an entry fee to discourage random fools from standing in the primary that they don't like. Everyone is speculating now who the Veep will be...

Meanwhile another Tsai, Alex Tsai, who ran the laughably inept campaign for the KMT's Sean Lien in Taipei Mayor that culminated in an epic spanking, survived a recall election by the Appendectomy Project. I considered this project a waste of time and resources by self-promoters, which is why I've more or less ignored it (ADDED: Frozen Garlic with good thoughts on the recall vote).

The big news is that the Presidential and legislative elections are going to be held on the same day in Jan of 2016:

CEC members decided during a meeting today that the 14th presidential and the 9th legislative elections [next year] shall be held on the same day,” CEC Chairman Liu I-chou (劉義周) told a press conference after the meeting. “As for the date of the elections, the CEC will call a meeting with local election commissions to decide.”

Everyone agrees that (1) this favors the DPP and (2) the effect won't be very great. But high turnout in the Presidential election should help put a few DPP candidates in office. This means that the election is now eleven months away. Most people expect the DPP to win the Presidency. If the election were held tomorrow Tsai Ing-wen would win, but the DPP has eleven months to exercise its powerful capacity for screwing up. So I'll be on tenterhooks until she is actually sworn in.

With the KMT's numerous problems, I'm very curious to see how many local faction politicians break with the party and attempt to run as independents over the next few months, since that will be a strong signal of the KMT's direction. How new Chairman Eric Chu handles the local factions will be vital... and yet here is Ma Ying-jeou...

MaWangMess: You'd think that with 11 months remaining til election time Ma Ying-jeou, current KMT Chairman Eric Chu, and the KMT would be burying the hatchet and trying to move forward, but current President of the ROC and former KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou is still pursuing his vendetta against the Speaker of the Legislature Wang Jin-pyng (MaWangMess, MaWangMess). The other day he demanded to know why new Chairman Eric Chu isn't out there pushing a third appeal by the KMT in the case. Wang is a major leader of the Taiwanese KMT and the vendetta against him caused a split in the KMT. Chu cannot file another appeal without re-opening those wounds. A smart, pragmatic politician would let the issue die, but only someone totally clueless would describe an inflexible ideologue like Ma as "pragmatic." Hilariously, Ma accused Chu of playing Tai Chi.

Not so comically, Ma has to keep the focus on Wang. Not only will it be a terrible loss of face for Ma if Wang retains his party honors, but more importantly, if the media focus is on Wang, it will take the media focus off Ma himself: the information he used against Wang appears to have been obtained illegally and Ma may have to face charges of abuse of power. The prosecutor who fed Ma the information that he used against Wang has already been found guilty of a crime in that case...
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Daily Links:

• China Policy Institute blog: Who Needs Whom in the China-Taiwan Relationship?
• Taiwan's growing problem of nuclear waste
• Lovely pics from Josh Ellis of Taipei's mansions
• The latest Taiwan insider from Thinking Taiwan.
• Forbes published a column noting that the Independence is strong here. One hardly knows how to react... happiness that a mainstream media organ published a piece delineating the strong pro-independence sentiment, or hilarity that it's years behind events? 
• Jail terms for massive abuse of national park property. Absolutely outrageous, but when voters don't punish people...

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Ko Wen-je VS the Construction-Industrial State: Ko wins one

Beachcombing in Hsinchu.

Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je is rocking the construction-industrial state. The Taipei Times reports...

The Taipei Dome and Farglory’s contract had become a source of controversy in recent days as Ko and his administrative team began looking at several major projects either underway or in the proposal stage.

Prior to last night’s meeting, Ko had said the Dome contract would have to be revised to increase the penalties for failing to meet deadlines. He also said discrepancies between the initial contract terms during the bidding process and the firm’s final contract needed to be discussed.

“Farglory has already gone past the deadline for completing the project, in violation of the contract,” Ko said earlier yesterday, adding that the original contract’s penalty clauses “do not have any real impact,” because they only allow the city government to fine the firm a total of NT$3 million (US$95,300) for violations.

Hacking on the previous administration, Ko pointed out that Control Yuan asked that 39 articles in the contract be revised, but the previous KMT administration had not done so. Former KMT Mayor Hau had used the infamous you-do-not-understand attack to defend himself from Ko's exposure of his administration's apparent embrace of big companies...

Countering criticism leveled at several projects undertaken during his administration, former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday accused Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and his team of using “defamatory” tactics to hide their “ignorance” of municipal issues.

Hau also defended himself by saying that everything had been done according to the law and passed the ethics commission. Such reviews in Taiwan are typically prima facie. KMT Chair Eric Chu has asked Hau to take over the National Policy Foundation, the KMT's internal think tank. Hau is a princeling, like Chu, another clue that "reform" under Chu is going to be limited to revamping and further locking down the Party's relationships with the local factions so they don't bolt. ADDED: Yam ripped him in an editorial solidarity.tw captured.

So far, this is my favorite Ko moment:

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he has ordered all Taipei City Government departments to draft a complete list of all municipal property, after discovering that the controversial bus lane on Zhongxiao W Road includes a bus stop that is not listed as belonging to the city.

Ko also said he'd can the Taipei police chief if pro-PRC "protesters" in front of Taipei 101 continued their violent assaults on people; the chief subsequently retired, along with a fire department official. Ko is making everyone else administrating a county/city look bad. Commonwealth interviewed him in December shortly after his election victory.

BTW, some of you may recall that the Tax Bureau was pursuing Ko's family in a totally non-political case. Yesterday it dinged his parents for $31,200 NT. This is a symbolic figure -- once it was committed to the apparent harassment, it had to fine them, but if it had been a large amount, that would have called further attention to the fact that Ko's family was being pursued in a totally non-political case.

Mayor Lin Jia-long of Taichung killed the Taiwan Tower project in Taichung when its budget nearly doubled. Should that be read as a genuine commitment to curbing the construction-industrial state? Or just a one-off designed to make Lin look like he is doing a Ko Wen-je in Taichung, using a bad project with no great construction-industrial state support? For me the jury is still out on Lin. Another major project Lin has criticized, the BRT, saw an inevitable accident today.

Up and Coming for the KMT: As the TT reports, during the run up to the KMT Chairmanship election Chu hinted that he'd end the Party's assault on one of its most loyal servants, Legislative Speaker and longtime heavyweight Wang Jin-pyng (MaWangMess, MaWangMess). A group of legislators has proposed that the KMT withdraw its appeal of the court ruling that permitted Wang Jin-pyng to retain his position in the Party and in the legislature. Chu has delayed a response, but if he drops the appeal, it will be another declaration of Chu breaking with President and former KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (like his elimination of Ma's Zhongshan Council and return of power to the Central Standing Committee), who has been doing his Saruman-in-Orthanc imitation since the crushing defeat of the KMT in November. In fact the China Post report has Chu specifically saying he "respects Ma's authority", showing that Chu also views this issue as one that puts himself and Ma in conflict. The Ma-Wang mess really harmed the KMT's relations with its legislators. Surely Chu must sense the urgent need to fix that, and will drop the appeal. If not, then we know something about him and his relations with the KMT.
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Daily Links:

• Gerrit van der Wees of FAPA on US-Taiwan relations, other issues (video)
• Watch out! local monkeys harbor Herpes B.
• WantWant: Eric Chu must staunch KMT hemorrhage.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

MaWangMess Postscript: Wang cleared of influence peddling

Green Island road.

Well well well. It appears that Speaker of the Legislature Wang Jin-pyng has won a complete victory over President and KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou in the Affair of Influence peddling. The Taipei Times reports:

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has been cleared of allegations of influence peddling, the Taipei Prosecutors’ Office announced yesterday, after its investigative unit last month concluded that there was no evidence backing claims that Wang spoke with retired judge Yang Ping-chen (楊炳禎) to request that he influence an embezzlement case involving Formosa Telecom Investment Co (全民電通).

The case exposed the fact that the SID was wiretapping the legislature's phones. In a long post at the time I observed:

It is striking that no transcript of the alleged phone calls telling the prosecutor to lay off Ker has been produced by the SID, since it has leaked transcripts of Wang Jin-pyng's phone calls. Indeed, the lack of such leaks suggests that no such transcripts exist. This tends to support Wang's claims that he was just comforting Ker and hadn't done anything.

No evidence was ever produced that Wang had acted on Ker's behalf. It will be interesting now to see the fallout. The pro-Blue media faithfully followed the Ma camp line, taking it as a fact that Wang had engaged in influence peddling (example, example), as did Ma himself (Taipei Times). There may be lawsuits, though I expect Wang to simply relish his complete victory and not stoop to suing the President and the newspapers.

Interestingly, the Prosecutor who illegally leaked the information that Wang had committed influence peddling to Ma received a 14 month sentence, which was commuted to a small fine. Does this mean that Ma had done something illegal as well?
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All sorts of corruption, but who is actually being punished?

Suhua views

Today offered contrasting corruptions. First, Ex-Chiayi County Council Yu Cheng-ta skipped out on his prison sentence...(TaiwanNews)

The 53-year-old's guilty verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court on May 22 for soliciting a bribe of NT$1 million (US$33,000) from local businessmen in 2007 when the county organized street fairs for the Taiwan Lantern Festival that year. In the final verdict on the case, the court gave a sentence of 10 years and four months with a suspension of civil rights for five years. His jail term was set to begin June 6, but Yu did not show up.

What? A criminal convicted of corruption skipped out on his prison sentence? Who could have predicted that? It's not like it hasn't happened ten thousand times before. Where is Lo Fu-chu? Where is Wang Yu-yun? The list of such individuals is long, and the gov't has been stalling about a law for this for years. So disgusting sarcasm just fails. It's not only the politicians but the System itself that is corrupt.

WantWant China Times, the rabidly pro-China paper, today published a mournful commentary entitled Hung Ching-tai Scandal Spells End of KMT Election Hopes on the KMT chances in the 2014 elections, thanks to the corruption investigations that are hitting KMT-run local governments, the latest being Keelung...

Huang was planning a bid to become Keelung mayor in the year-end elections and the domino effect from his arrest will influence all other KMT-ruled cities and counties, prompting voters to cast their vote for other parties, which will will likely see the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) become the biggest winner in the seven-in-one elections.

...

President Ma's focus on the image of the KMT as "incorruptible," may very well be his party's downfall, as it has been used to back corrupt Keelung mayors, such as former mayor Hsu Tsai-li and incumbent Chang Tong-rong.

Nearly all of Ma's closest KMT allies and subordinates have been indicted, arrested or convicted for corruption, including Miaoli county magistrate Liu Cheng-hong, Nantou county magistrate Lee Chao-ching, Changhua county magistrate Cho Po-yuan as well as Chang, which has undermined the president's image.

Yada yada yada. It may have an effect but it won't be very strong. Voters in Taiwan have no trouble voting for corrupt politicians, and it is normal that in any given period any number of local KMT politicos are under investigation or being convicted of something or other. It is merely background noise to the local election process, since there is an endless stream of local faction politicians to replace them. Imprisoned politicians are one of the costs of doing business for the local factions...

Far more important will be the infighting at higher levels of the KMT and the incompetent, arrogant, indifferent performance of the President, who is also the KMT party Chairman. If Ma makes another strafing run at Speaker of the Legislature Wang Jin-pyng, who was the subject of a bruising political battle last year (search MaWangMess), that will do far more damage to the Party than corruption investigations. According to critics, the KMT has apparently moved to make sure the judges rule the way the KMT wants them to, which implies that Ma is going to go several more rounds with Wang. Let's hope he decides to move before the November local elections.

But the real corruption? Is it in the second police assault on the Executive Yuan protesters? The first merely involved fists. This second one involves using the law as a club.... Taiwan Voice posted this on Facebook. Click on Read More to see the whole sad story.

Taiwan Voice

171 Sunflower Movement and antinuclear activists handed over to the prosecutor's office
According to the police, 171 anti-CSSTA activists were swiftly handed over to prosecutors yesterday. Meanwhile, the investigation of state violence has been moving along at a snail’s pace. During the Sunflower Movement and the antinuclear movement, the police abused their power when responding to the non-violent demands. In fact, the police actively targeted the protesters for peacefully expressing their opinions. After three months, the police are still unable to identify the individual police officers who used excessive force on protesters, despite the fact that the police collected the evidence themselves, recorded the entirety the incidents, assigned tasks during the incidents, scheduled the duty roster, and had each individual officer sign in on duty sheets. Somehow, the collection of identities and actions of anonymous, peaceful protesters has proved much more easy for them to acquire. (http://on.fb.me/1giPnDG)

(Meanwhile) Ma Ying-jeou takes another beating

The fallout from the MaWangMess continues. First, State Prosector Huang, who leaked the information to President Ma Ying-jeou that Speaker Wang Jin-pyng had allegedly conspired with the justice minister and prosecutors to get a DPP legislator off has been sentenced to 14 months....

State Prosecutor-General Huang Shyh-ming was sentenced to one year and two months in prison Friday for leaking classified information related to an ongoing investigation to President Ma Ying-jeou.

Huang has said he would resign if found guilty. His four-year term is due to end on April 18.

The Taipei District Court allowed the senior prosecutor to commute his sentence to a fine of NT$420,000 (US$13,721).

This is judicial confirmation that Huang committed in an illegal act. Does that mean Ma Ying-jeou did too?

The second thing that has happened is Speaker of the Legislature Wang Jin-pyng. The KMT lost its case yesterday and Wang was allowed to keep his KMT membership, meaning that President Ma, whose obsessive attack on Wang delayed passage of the Services Pact and split his party, has lost on all fronts. Speaker Wang serenely refused to clear the legislature of students today, and his stock has risen. In fact, at the moment, he's looking pretty damn presidential.... Wang in 2016? He's a wily player and fixer, and closely connected to the Old Guard of the KMT, yet also the informal leader of the Taiwanese KMT legislators from the south and center of the island... Wang said today:

As to the meeting originally set for 11 a.m., which he told Ma Friday morning he would not attend, Wang said that it is "not appropriate" for the head of the Legislature to attend the administration's meeting under the stipulations of the Constitution.

In a three-point statement, Wang said Ma's use of Article 44 of the Constitution to call for the meeting was not valid, as the article in question governs "disputes between two or more Yuans (branches)" of the five-branch government.

The current situation, however, is not a dispute between the Legislative Yuan and Executive Yuan, but one between ruling and opposition lawmakers over the service trade pact, he said.

.......

Between two calls from the president, Kuomintang (KMT) Vice Chairman and former Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Yuan Tseng Yung-chuan was also instructed to call Wang, according to the speaker's statement.

As the speaker of the Legislature, Wang said he will continue to take every possible avenue of communication and mediation while taking stock of the view of all involved parties. He said he will call for consultations among the different legislative caucuses "when necessary."

As Ma serves as chairman of the KMT, Wang said it is incumbent on him to promote dialogue between ruling and opposition parties to solve the impasse and restore order.

Wang is putting everything on Ma.... the pro-China WantChinaTimes says Wang excoriates Ma.

But any way you slice this, the President has taken a savage beating over his attack on Wang and over the Services Pact.
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BREAKING: Students Take Legislature UPDATE WITH LIVESTREAM

BREAKING: Students occupy legislature to protest illegal trade pact moves. The KMT ignored procedure to bring the pact to a vote, and has ignored the public's expressed wish for a line by line review.

• Buzzfeed with good explanation
• LiveStream [NEW]
• Ketagalen media
• CNN iReport.
• Slideshare.net: problems with the trade pact (in Chinese)
• FocusTaiwan: gov't media view, love the comical stuff from Ma about respecting the legislature -- remember the MaWangMess when he went after its speaker?

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Freezing independence for the DPP?

Lotus in the mud...

The DPP made the news last week with party whip Ker Chien-ming calling for the party to "freeze" its independence plank if it wants to return to power. This proposal was greeted with unicorns and rainbows by Beijing, and summarily rejected by the DPP.

What a coincidence, eh? That's the same Ker who was the subject of KMT Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng's alleged influence peddling. That MaWangMess focused on Ma's bizarre attempt to oust Wang, and Ker was sort of ignored with the media and political junkies riveted by the spectacle of Ma suffering abject defeat. No mud landed on him.

Now Ker is coming out with the weird idea of "freezing" independence. Payback for a favor? I'm sure it is all just a coincidence.
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Daily Links:

• Some US analysts fear Taiwan too close to Beijing. The Administration's TPP-based strategy is a US corporate giveaway and everyone in the region knows it, stupid, self-defeating, exploitative. Washington would win lots more friends if it simply followed the advice to work on a straightforward military agreement with the smaller nations. But then the Obama Administration is a total corporate-owned failure...
• Taiwan democracy at work: citizen coders aggregating government data from Taiwan
• Chinese meets Taiwanese in the US: Taiwanese need to speak up in all these encounters. 

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Links.... alas, too busy to blog

Had a lot of fun riding down to the Chiayi HSR today. We played follow the HSR line through the farm tracks in southern Yunlin county. Forgot that there are only a couple of bridges across the river into Chiayi. Ended up taking the new tourism bridge in Beigang...with that chilly north wind at our backs, riding was easy.  

Too busy to blog today.....

Daily Links:

• Why doesn't anyone care about rising US-China tension?
• Latest in the MaWangMess: lesser prosecutor falls victim to influence peddling accusations, which legislators from both major parties argues is to help Ma eliminate Wang. I'm still flabbergasted by what a terrible beating Ma took in that mess. 
• A good piece on the ridiculous state of Taiwan's environmental laws.
• Haha. Dutch fabricator (I refuse to soil the word "artist" by attaching it to the name of a person who makes inflatable rubber ducks) complains Keelung is spoiling the tranquility of his duck display. This duck + tourists affair is so stupid, it's almost as if the giant duck is designed to confirm every malign thought you have ever had about human nature.
• Taiwan investment in China falling. 
• This is amazing: A forgotten aboriginal village deep in the Pingtung mountains

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MaWangMess: Blowback edition II: Prosecutor Huang indicted

Caught in mid-flight, early morning dew on its back.

The MaWangMess continues to blow back on the President, as Taipei District prosecutors went after Prosecutor Huang for leaking information to Ma.

State Prosecutor-General Huang Shyh-ming was indicted Friday on charges of leaking classified information in violation of the Criminal Code and the Communication Security and Surveillance Act.

The indictment said Huang broke the law when he briefed President Ma Ying-jeou Aug. 31 on tapped phone conversations indicating that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng lobbied the justice minister and a senior high court prosecutor in late June to prevent legal action against an opposition lawmaker.

Just  couple of things -- the indictment, I've heard, contains a rebuke of the prosecutor which says that his tactics smack of the old authoritarian party-state era. Awesome. Once the attack on Wang failed Huang became the obvious sacrifice. I can't imagine that the Court will convict Huang but then I thought they couldn't lose on the Wang case in the high court. Huang denied everything and said he'd resign if convicted.
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MaWangMess: Fallout landing downwind edition =UPDATED=

A 1939 stamp of the Republic of China, showing that Taiwan and the Senkakus have always been part of China whose return China was demanding. O wait....

The KMT's refusal to appeal the decision in the Wang case to the Supreme Court means that Ma and Wang must co-exist. It is hard to read that as anything but a defeat, but smart observers assure me that it ain't over yet.

Meanwhile the fallout from Ma's entirely self-generated implosion is landing on -- who else? -- Prosecutor-General Huang, who brought the Wang case to Ma's attention, and other prosecutors within the SID. Today the papers were full of the SID's droll claim that it had tapped a legislative phone number by mistake. The Taipei Times wrote:

Huang and Yang, SID’s chief prosecutor, will be referred to the committee for supervisory negligence, while Cheng, the prosecutor overseeing the wiretap assignment, will be held accountable for administrative errors, according to the panel’s report.

The SID has said that it mistakenly assumed that the telephone number 0972-630-235 belonged to a legislative assistant and that nothing was recorded on the 21 compact discs it obtained from the Investigation Bureau from the wiretap.

The ministry’s ad hoc panel, established on Sept. 29, supported the SID’s stance, but said that the error could have been avoided.

Telephone records for that number in the six months before the SID began its wiretap showed that the number averaged about 364 calls a day during that time, which prosecutors should have realized meant that it might not be the number of an individual, Chen said.

Actually, despite much skepticism around the intertubes about the SID's explanation, anyone with experience working in Taiwanese institutions can easily see how this could have occurred initially by mistake; administrative errors in Taiwan's institutions are common because in Taiwan it is the lower-level (so often female) people who actually do all the productive work, the credit for their work flowing upwards towards concentrations of patriarchal power. They are typically massively overworked. Moreover, for procedures that are implemented less frequently, often no one is really sure what the correct procedure actually is. Hence everything is kicked upstairs until at last it reaches someone who is compelled to make a decision. Far from the front, he signs off, praying that nothing was wrong with the list of things he just handed on.

Meanwhile back at the farm the front line employees eventually discover that an error was made. This of course means that they say nothing about the error, since their superiors will almost certainly punish them. Hence the processes themselves have a kind of golem-like autonomy independent of the people who set them in motion, and like a golem, will stumble around, arms flailing, until someone gets hurt. That such processes are rational in other countries does not mean they will be rational in Taiwan.

UPDATE: Haha. Sunday's Taipei Times offers this tidbit as KMT legislators go after Prosecutor-General Huang:

According to the report, there had been 13 cases of three other telephone numbers, also used by the legislature as its switchboard lines, being tapped during 2007 and 2009, when prosecutors investigated into various suspected cases related to vote-buying and corruption.

13 other cases?? Hahaha.

In addition to being the subject of several investigations for possibly violating laws and rules in reporting the Wang tape results to President Ma, P-G Huang is also the subject of a record number of lawsuits, reports the Taipei Times:

As of Thursday, the prosecutors’ office has received 86 motions against Huang, which have been assigned to 14 prosecutors. Reportedly, a common friendly greeting among prosecutors in the past weeks is: “Are you now handling a case on the prosecutor-general?”

Affairs like this are carnivorous, apt to turn on their progenitors. After all, someone must be punished. It seems to me that since Wang is wearing mithril armor under his cloak, Prosecutor-General Huang is likely to be the sacrifice demanded. UPDATE: Yep.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Friday Links

Riding tomorrow at last. Three weeks of minimal biking has made me fat and surly. That may well be indistinguishable from the normal me, come to think of it.

• Brian explains China's scary use of history in its claim to NE Korea...
• China Policy Institute blog hosts pro-Ma piece claiming that Ma is a frustrated reformer. 
• Jamestown Brief on China and Taiwan volunteer military programs
• AP reports on the protests against the Ma government
• Documentary on Hsiaolin Village disaster to compete in Japan
• Jamestown Brief piece argues that DPP will win 2014 seven-in-one elections and policymakers in Beijing and Washington will have to deal with it. It's a nice thought, but local elections are contested locally and will not be greatly affected by the MaWangMess.
• Frozen Garlic with some interesting observations on the poll numbers 
• Reuters interview with author of Stumbling Giant on China's future.
• Here's the full text of the service agreement. LOL to the misspelled URL.
• Trends in US-Taiwan relationship

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AP: Pressure Mounts on Ma.... Really?

In a temple procession, a ji tong possessed by the spirit of the god talks to a young man.

AP reports on President Xi of China's remarks that the political issues between China and Taiwan must be resolved and talks could not be indefinitely put off:

Xi’s comments Sunday on the sidelines of the APEC summit meeting in Bali, Indonesia. represented his strongest statement so far on the Taiwan unification issue, which remains a fundamental cause of instability in the western Pacific. China insists that the democratic island be brought under its control, and has threatened force to achieve that goal. The two sides split after a civil war in 1949.

 AP read this as increased pressure on Ma. I don't. Unless it is accompanied by concrete measures, it's just the usual noise that Chinese officials are always making. It sucks that AP reported this as "pressure mounts". So much of the swirling perceptions of China's desire to annex Taiwan are shaped by the media's (selective) hyping and studious neglect. As Jonathon Sullivan of the U of Nottingham pointed out a couple of years ago in a paper on Chen Shui-bian's speeches, Chen basically said all things to all audiences like any seasoned politician, but the international media focused only on a narrow slice of his words. Can we wait and see whether Xi's rhetoric is accompanied by concrete gestures or a sustained campaign of rhetoric before we decide whether the pressure is really mounting?

Meanwhile in both international and local news reports Ma is seen to have been weakened by his astounding attack on the Speaker of his own Party. The KMT did not file an appeal to continue its case against Speaker Wang, as if they knew they would lose again. But many people I know are saying privately: the MaWangMess ain't over yet.
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MaWangMess: Weeklong Blowback Edition

Hengchun gate.

What a week for President Ma "Blowback" Ying-jeou. It opened on Monday with the KMT losing its second court case. The High Court affirmed the district court's decision to reinstate Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng in the Party and in his position. The KMT then declared it would appeal to the Supremes. No matter how well Wang sings "Where did our love go?"  I have some trouble believing that Wang will win there.

I was saying last night how for years I was reading how totally out of touch Ma was said to be but never really believed it. But now... I believe. The revelations of dubiously legal wiretapping, the complete lack of political sense in attacking Wang the declarations of guilt without trial or evidence... surely someone could have foreseen this? Could everyone be so out of touch? I had always thought that even though Ma had been groomed for this position as head of KMT, President, and bearer of its return-to-ZionChina torch, that he had a modicum of flexibility and good political sense, or at least his handlers did --that POV was seriously shaken by his narcissistic behavior during the Morakot disaster three years ago. But looking at his take-no-prisoners, with-me-or-against-me position, I'm seriously wondering if his rise is due in part to his simply being more rigid, more inflexible Chinese bargainer* than everyone else.

And the week ended with the President called to testify. Yes, the Taipei District prosecutors office opened a case against Prosecutor-General Huang for leaking details of the investigation of Wang's alleged influence-peddling. They are processing all the testimony now:

The district prosecutors’ office summoned the four after several lawyers and citizens filed lawsuits against Huang, accusing him of leaking secrets in the Special Investigation Division’s (SID) probe when he briefed Ma on information gathered through wiretapping involving Wang and Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).

The prosecutors summoned Ma to clarify the details of meetings he had with Huang on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, five days before Huang called a press conference to accuse Wang of misconduct.

The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said Ma was given plenty of time to answer prosecutors’ questions. After the questioning, which was conducted from 8pm to 9:30pm, Ma spent more than 10 minutes reading his testimony before signing it, the office said.

The KMT news organ was reporting that all the testimonies of Ma et al were consistent.

The indignity of the President having to testify on the matter was surely compounded by the fact that there is at the moment no similar humiliation being inflicted on Wang. There is little wiggle room here -- if Wang calling the Justice Minister to get the prosecutors to forego an appeal in a friend's case is influence peddling, then so is the President's listening to improperly leaked information and then acting on it, apparently while acting in concert with the prosecutor's office.

More urgently, Wang's influence peddling -- for which there is no good evidence -- is trivial compared to the democracy-threatening use of prosecutors to eliminate the President's political enemies within his own party. For it is hard to imagine why the prosecutor would come to the President and offer him information like this unless he expected him to use it. Logically, that implies that such an expectation could be formed only if Prosecutor Huang either (1) had never done so before but understood Ma well enough to risk presenting this information or (2) he and the President had danced together before. Readers will have to decide.....

The wiretapping issue isn't dying either. The Control Yuan is opening a long probe of it.

It should also be noted that this affair and its ever-ramifying effect on Ma's presidency was exactly the wrong move if Ma wanted to speed the passage of the destructive services agreement through the legislature. Now everyone is angry, his public support has taken a beating, and any public review of the legislation will be carried through in a thoroughly poisoned atmosphere in which many will be eager to punish the President. Great work, that.

As always in sprawling affairs of this nature, there were light moments this week. UDN, the fanatically pro-KMT paper, scribbled an editorial which hilariously wondered why everyone was focusing on the wiretapping and Ma's behavior when the real issue was Wang's alleged influence peddling. Ma Ying-jeou's sister sent around a nasty text message attacking KMT legislators for not publicly supporting President Ma and excoriating Wang Jin-pyng:

Ma Yi-nan said she wanted the seven to talk to other KMT lawmakers and ask them to come out in support of Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, in his relentless fight for “matters of principle” in this case.

“I haven’t seen any KMT lawmaker express support [for Ma Ying-jeou] in front of the media, but I honestly believe that we can judge right from wrong in our hearts. The president cannot back out now,” Ma Yi-nan said.

On the serious side, this shows how little support there is for this move outside the Presidential office.  Legislators have to distance themselves from Ma with local elections coming up next year; their supporters at home may feel the impact of the President's ineptitude. I predict that few local political signs will have the President's image on them come next year.

So much more to write..... lots of people are comparing the government shutdown by the Republican Party lawmakers in the house to Ma's obdurate and insensitive behavior, but there is no comparison. Ma hasn't killed anyone and the government here is open for business and people are getting necessary services.

*Win-win bargaining, Chinese definition: "This way I win, and that way I win, and either way, you're an idiot."
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

MaWangMess: Wang wins another round

Jes' restin'.

AFP reports on Ma taking another blow:

Taiwan's parliamentary speaker scored another victory in the battle for his job Monday after the high court upheld a ruling against his party's decision to expel him over claims of influence-peddling.

Earlier this month, the Taipei district court granted Wang Jin-pyng's request for a provisional injunction against the Kuomintang (KMT) party, allowing him to hold his party membership and therefore continue as speaker.

The party, led by President Ma Ying-jeou, appealed the ruling, but the appeal was thrown out by the high court on Monday.

The KMT said it would appeal to the Supreme Court. Apparently a dozen or so KMT legislators have urged Ma not to appeal:

According to KMT legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), a dozen or so KMT legislators, including Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井), Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟), Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑), Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) and Chen Ken-te (陳根德), decided to write a letter to President Ma after a gathering held last week to discuss the political situation. “During the gathering, we discussed the recent political turmoil caused by the feud between President Ma and Speaker Wang. A couple of days ago, a taxi driver committed suicide. In a letter he left behind, he wrote that he was disappointed with the government for failing to revive the economy and constantly engaging in political infighting. The death of the taxi driver shocked society. During the gathering, the attendees asked me to take the lead to write a letter to President Ma recommending that the KMT withdraw its interlocutory appeal against Wang in order to put an end to the political infighting so that he could concentrate on reviving the economy.”

The latest China Times poll had the President at 19%. Though Speaker Wang has not been charged, the Presidential Office continued to insist that he was guilty:

[Presidential spokesman] Lee stated that President Ma Ying-jeou’s insistence on the independence of the judiciary would never change, nor would the President tolerate the fact that the Legislative Speaker had illegally lobbied the Justice Minister and the chief prosecutor of Taiwan Provincial Prosecutors Office in a court case involving the DPP party whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).

Lee stated that there was no gray area in the Wang case.

What will President Ma do if the Supremes don't uphold this political assault on the KMT's own Speaker?

Even more deliciously, the Justice Ministry announced a probe of SID chief Huang, a probe which Ma had to make pro forma noises saying he supported. The SID explains all its wiretapping here. Just accidents and mistakes.

I see no way Ma can ever really recover from this train wreck, except by waiting for time to rehabilitate him. But if Ma can do this, what other accidents await? Ma's rigidity and political ineptitude remind me of another President of the ROC, from several decades ago....

MEDIA MOMENT: AFP hilariously reported:

Ma's approval rating had hit a record low of around 9 per cent earlier this year, before rising to more than 21 per cent in a recent poll.

I guess two weeks ago is "earlier this year." Technically.  The protest against Ma was variously reported: "tens of thousands" in Taipei Times, 5500 in WSJ (police estimates).
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

MaWangMess: Wiretapping Scandal Expands and other goodies

Pigeon cage outside Dongshih.

The papers were reported today that DPP Whip Ker Chien-ming said that the SID was tapping the legislature's switchboard number....

Earlier in the day Legislator Ker Chien-ming, a caucus whip of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), told the press he had received notice from the court that the wiretapping of his phones had been discontinued, following his acquittal in a breach of trust case.

The notice listed several numbers that had been under surveillance, including his cell phone number and the Legislative Yuan's switchboard number 0972630235, Ker said.

"Even the parliament was being monitored," Ker said at a press conference at the Legislative Yuan, which was also attended by DPP legislators Wu Ping-jui and Kuan Bi-ling.

.....

Meanwhile, at a separate press conference Saturday morning, acting SID spokesman Yang Jung-chung repeatedly denied Ker's accusation, which was reported in a morning newspaper.

The SID "has never eavesdropped on the switchboard of the Legislative Yuan," Yang said several times. He said 0972630235 is the number of a cell phone used by an individual.

However, Tsai Wei-min, head of the Legislative Yuan's General Affairs Department, told the press the same day that the number has been used by the Legislative Yuan since August 2006 as part of a cost saving system.

Readers may recall that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng had been publicly accused by the President of influence peddling by calling the Minister of Justice and having him tell the prosecutors not to appeal a not guilty verdict against Ker. The DPP politicians also said that the SID had been monitoring the prosecutor in the Ker case, which the SID admitted. They admitted that they monitored her 12 year old daughter, accidentally, since she was using her mom's phone (SCMP). They then switched to the husband's phone which Lin Hsiu-tao was using, musical phones being a common feature of busy families.

It is striking that no transcript of the alleged phone calls telling the prosecutor to lay off Ker has been produced by the SID, since it has leaked transcripts of Wang Jin-pyng's phone calls. Indeed, the lack of such leaks suggests that no such transcripts exist. This tends to support Wang's claims that he was just comforting Ker and hadn't done anything.

The case has produced, at least for this observer, many moments of delicious blinding hypocrisy. FocusTaiwan ran another piece saying that the KMT's lawyers told the Taiwan High Court that the party would not work out a political compromise in the Wang case...

Asking the KMT to consider a settlement is tantamount to advising the party to "compromise its insistence upon resisting influence peddling in judicial cases and upon defending the core values of democracy and rule of law, which is an independent judiciary," the statement said.

Anyone remember when the judge in the Chen Shui-bian case got switched? Media personalities gathered this week to protest the wiretapping mess in Taiwan

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC the diplomatic core got egg on its face...

Representative to the US, King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), and Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) Press Division Director Frank Wang (王億) yesterday apologized over a controversial post on the Washington Post Web site, which describes Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) as “former Legislative Speaker.”

Frank Wang said Wang Jin-pyng was the “former Legislative Speaker” in the Washington Post Web site’s readers’ comments column on Sept. 14 and concluded by saying “I’m very glad the [Chinese Nationalist Party] KMT came to resolutely discipline its heavyweight party member.”

Events like this are reminders of how the KMT continues to imagine the State is an appendage of the KMT Party, using the diplomatic corps to comment on and defend what should be an internal matter of the KMT and a domestic politic issue. Note that if they had merely said nothing, or confined themselves to noting in a pro forma fashion how the open political conflict is an indicator of the strength of Taiwan's democracy, they would not now be having to apologize..... this affair continues to be a needless mess entirely the creation of Ma's KMT.... and judging from the comments on Facebook, tomorrow's news will be even funnier.

ADDITIONAL REFS: Jens Kastner with some sensible quotes from John Copper on the MaWangMess.
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Daily Links:

• Siew to represent Taiwan at APEC meeting
• Taipei-Manila fisheries talks postponed.
• Taiwan receives aircraft, holds live fire exercise.
• Japanese auto parts firms indicted for price fixing, Taiwan may be involved. Taiwan also involved in honey laundering. That's old news.
• Trinidad woman needs $40K to come to Taiwan to find missing daughter.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Links for a Slow Typhoon Day

I know you must be trapped indoors on this ugly typhoon day -- no rain here yet in central Taiwan so far. So enjoy some links....

• Taiwan should reform its economy to prosper. 
• The Writing Baron on the old Beitou Granary. Such sites are found all over Taiwan.
• Halpin says the MaWangMess is nothing like Watergate. 
• Tourists from India to Taiwan on the rise.
• China's Xi touring Central Asia, where it is a huge investor and power player. China is the major  victor of America's defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its influence in the area is unmatched.
• Off the Beaten Track on the Lost Soul Valley, now buried under a massive landslide, and an abandoned amusement park. Surely this tiny island has more abandoned amusement parks per square kilometer than any similar sized region on earth.
• China sending out more jets to play games with Japan over the Senkakus.
• The South China Sea festers while the US wastes treasure and effort and diplomatic credit in Syria.
• Taipower on a WWII US attack on central Formosa.
• China's economic offensive and Taiwan's defensive measures (academic piece)
• Wasserman: Mankind must focus efforts on Fukushima.
• Oz rips Taiwan's clerics for being homophobic nutjobs.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Ma-Wang notes -- 2016?

Tea farms on Alishan

Some random thoughts on the Ma-Wang disaster for the KMT. Frozen Garlic wrote....

....The judges have been around a little longer and are less idealistic and more political. This is probably a selection effect, with the politically reliable ones getting promoted. The higher up the court system you go, the more political the court supposedly is. So it isn’t surprising that Ma lost in the lower court. Experience tells us that the higher courts will be more sympathetic to his arguments. Today, right on cue, High Court judges were randomly assigned to the case. Wang had asked for a public lottery, but the court insisted on doing it through a random computer process. Magically, the lead judge is married to a senior KMT figure who actually ran for the legislature under the KMT banner many years ago. The talk shows are abuzz questioning whether the assignment was really random.

Couple of things I'd like to note. First, I think Froze is correct in noting higher court judges are more ideological/political -- a lot of them are older civil servants from the 1980s when entrants into the bureaucracy were vetted to make sure they have properly pro-KMT political views. So the whole system appears biased, and it will take two generations for any such bias to work itself out of the System. I also think the lower court realized its ruling didn't matter, since whatever it said would be appealed. So the Court decided to have a little fun and then kick the case upstairs for its true resolution.

Another issue here is Wang's request for a public lottery for the judge selection. That's pretty much an admission that he strongly suspects the computer system is rigged.

2016 now looms. Wang will be 75 and too old to be a candidate. Wu Den-yi, the Vice President, is not a congenial figure. Hau Long-bin, the mayor of Taipei, got elected in a city where they'd vote for the dead, rotting carcass of a dog on a stick if it were the KMT candidate.

What's interesting is what this case may be saying about the chances of Eric Chu, the younger rising star of the KMT, and Jiang Yi-huah, the current premier. The media started mentioning that Jiang might be a dark horse candidate for 2016 a while back. Chu is half-Taiwanese while Jiang's parents are mainlanders from Fujian. For Deep Blue ideologues like Ma who regard the ROC as "theirs", Taiwanese are inferiors and outsiders. If there really is an ethnic element to this assault on Wang by Ma, it may strengthen Jiang's position among the KMT's mainlander elites as a potential 2016 candidate, who have marginalized powerful Taiwanese like Wu Po-hsiung and Wang Jin-pyng. More practically, Jiang is close to Ma and Ma may further view him as one way Ma can rule Taiwan from beyond the political grave of 2016, if Ma can retain his grip on the KMT. Of course, this is a chain of speculations. I need to find a less potent brand of alcohol....

The letter from THRAC in yesterday's Taipei Times listed out some of the alleged constitutional improprieties:

By reporting to the president and then releasing the transcript at a press conference — without laying any charges — the SID grossly violated laws requiring nondisclosure of its investigations and has confirmed suspicions that it is a political tool of the KMT. There are also questions about the legality and propriety of the wiretap.

....

These actions constituted (to use his words) “improper influence at the highest level,” abuse of the office of president and violation of the separation of powers fundamental to a democracy. Ma then acted in his capacity as KMT chairman to have Wang’s party membership suspended and remove him as a legislator-at-large.

This confusion of Ma’s two roles as president and party chairman looks like a return to the old party-state practices of the KMT.

Third, contempt of the legislature. By using an internal KMT party process to remove its speaker, Ma has seriously violated the rights of the legislature. The speaker of the legislature is elected by its members. The legislature oversees the president. Now Ma has used his power as party chairman to become the overseer of the legislature. This has serious implications for KMT proportional vote legislators who must worry about a party chairman who can remove them so easily.

A vast crisis, now in suspension while the Court rules on it. All of it triggered by Ma's own actions, which he did not have to take.
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Daily Links:

• WSJ with a strong round up of the MaWangMess.
• Economist's round up of the MaWangMess: except for the ridiculous remark about reunification, the write up is great improvement over the hilarious Ma the Bumbler bumblement. But the Economist, strangely, continues to support Ma, who seeks to deliver Taiwan into the orbit of a Communist one-party state, rather than the DPP, which supports an independent capitalist democracy. Well, maybe not so strange, considering the Economist's real values....
• Haha. Suddenly the US can't afford to sell Taiwan F-16s. And so the merry-go-round continues. Nobody wants Taiwan to have F-16s except the DPP government.
• Taiwan seizes 820 kilograms of dolphin meat. Dolphin meat is always available if you know where to ask. 
• Dapu: Miaoli County Chief confronted by protesters. The police parted the crowd for him and let him in to pay his respects to Mr. Chang. However, when protest leaders stopped by the home to visit the body, the police would not let them in. 
• Taiwan dry bulk shipping firms to get boost from China trade.
• The BBC has an article on Taiwan's problems with innovation. Its identification of Taiwan's mom-n-pop management as an obstacle is spot on, but sadly it sees "innovation" solely in terms of a narrow slice of electronics firms. Taiwan's textile, machine tool, bike, sporting goods, and other industries, the lifeblood of the island's industrial heartland in central Taiwan, are ignored in this piece, as they are in so many others. Also, BBC's longtime institutional pro-China stance is especially irksome in this context -- one reason Taiwan firms moved to China was to avoid the kind of upgrading of tech and innovation and management BBC (correctly) advocates here and instead prolong dependence on the old low-wage manufacturing strategies of the 1960-80s. BBC is thus in the position of someone who shoots your parents and then laments the fact that you are an orphan.....

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!