I post this newspaper article: A victory for Taiwanese sovereignty March 23, 2004 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/22/1079939577917.html Taiwan is becoming democratic and its people feel they are Taiwanese, not Chinese. By Bruce Jacobs Taiwan's presidential election had everything. The campaign was full of divisive and vilifying rhetoric. There were two referendum questions that had China raving. On the afternoon before the election, the President and Vice-President were shot while campaigning. The victor won by fewer than 30,000 votes out of 12.9 million cast. And, to top it off, the loser proved he lacked leadership qualities by challenging the result without providing any evidence of fraud. Taiwan has been in a process of democratisation for the past two decades. In the early 1990s its leaders and voters decided to introduce direct elections of the president. Incumbent president Lee Teng-hui won 54 per cent of the vote in the first popular election in 1996. China's sending of missiles close to Taiwan, in a blatant effort to cow Taiwan's citizens, had backfired. In 2000, President Chen Shui-bian, of the then opposition Democratic Progressive Party, won with 39.3 per cent of the vote when the ruling Nationalist Party split. In last weekend's election, Chen faced an uphill battle because his two main opponents in 2000 had united to form a joint ticket. Lien Chan and James Soong thought they would easily win the election, but the DPP proved that "one and one doesn't always equal two". Lien and Soong had been key figures in both the old authoritarian government and in the 1990s during the democratisation process. Yet they represented the old system and conducted their campaign with lies and vilification. (Chen sometimes replied in kind. For example, he implied that Lien beat his wife.) When the Nationalists first came to Taiwan in 1945, they forced Taiwanese to become "Chinese" and ruled with a dictatorial "White Terror" regime that came from the Chinese mainland and subjugated the local Taiwanese, who account for more than 85 per cent of the population. Thus, democratisation in Taiwan has brought a sense of being Taiwanese. The sense of Taiwanese identity on the island has grown very quickly. From 1992 until late last year, a series of polls conducted by a reputable academic centre in Taiwan demonstrated that those who identify as only "Chinese" among Taiwan's population has dropped from more than 26 per cent to less than 10 per cent, while those who identify as only "Taiwanese" has grown from 17 per cent to more than 41 per cent. The proportion who identify as both "Taiwanese and Chinese" has remained in the low 40s. Chen has ridden this new sense of a "Taiwanese nation" to power. For the first time, the DPP has won a majority, even though very slim, in a national election. It is this new sense of a Taiwan nation that also guided much of the rhetoric of Lien and Soong, though many voters doubted their ultimate commitment to the island. Lien's ungracious speech after the election, urging that the election be declared null and void, has created some anxiety among foreign observers. My belief is that Lien has again shown that he lacks leadership ability - but that Taiwan will survive this challenge to its democratisation and move forward, with younger Nationalist leaders replacing Lien and Soong. Many Western, democratic countries including Australia, the United States and Japan, were concerned that Chen had put two referendum questions on the ballot paper at the same time as the presidential vote. Chen, however, believed the referendums would enhance Taiwan's democratisation process. China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, was concerned that the referendum questions were the prelude to a formal declaration of independence. The US was concerned that this could lead to war. In fact, the actual questions were quite harmless. Taiwan's Central Election Commission separated the presidential election from the referendums and the opposition urged sufficient people to abstain as to ensure the two referendum questions fail. This was a blow to Chen, but he has survived a bullet to his abdomen and now has a chance of four further years to implement his reform program. Many foreign specialists working on China have said they preferred Lien and Soong because they believed they would find it easier to make peace with the Chinese. In fact, Lien and Soong lacked a comprehensive program and much of their rhetoric resembled that of Chen. The lack of progress in cross-Straits relations is a result of the unwillingness of the Chinese to speak to Chen. Since 1996 they have waited fruitlessly for another candidate to become president. Taiwan is important to China for many reasons. It provides a huge amount of foreign capital, which contributes to China's economic growth. A more peaceful cross-straits environment would also enable China to reduce its military budget - although China's military may prefer to maintain the tension that contributes to their ever-increasing resources. If the Chinese want to negotiate, then it is time they talked to Chen. They will find a charming and reasonable man who will deal with China on the basis of peace and dignity. But they will not find a traitor to Taiwan, nor a man who will accept China's so-called "one China" policy that includes Taiwan. Taiwan has been an independent, sovereign country for 55 years. It will remain so. And it would have remained so had the opposition won the presidential election. Professor Bruce Jacobs is director of the Taiwan research unit at Monash University.
for those of you who can read Big-5 encoded Chinese, I urge you to read this commentary from the China Times, a traditionally pro-KMT paper. http://decision2004.chinatimes.com/report/Decision2004/comment/htm/93032294.htm
if any of you want to see the latest news or footage of the entire elction, as reported by stations all along the taiwanese political spectrum, just go to this website: http://mactv.atlas.com.tw/english/ select video-on-demand. you can select any program from any day of the previous week. this includes the election telecast on 3/20. also, you can catch the latest news programs in english, taiwanese and chinese. macroview shows four different versions of the news each day because these are made by the four terrestrial TV stations in Taiwan. to ensure politically neutrality of the macroview service, each of these are shown. below are their generally perceived political leaning. FTV = privately owned, pro-DPP TTV = govt owned, centrist, pro-DPP CTV = KMT-owned, pro-KMT CTS = military/govt owned, centrist, pro-KMT i think through the actual TV footage you can get a decent gauge of the taiwan's popular sentiment. and if you watch the actual election telecast, you can tell why the election fraud allegations are so ludicrous. i mean literally the second before, the KMT representative is saying "we lost this election, but i hope pres. chen will respect the opinions of the 49.9% who voted against him." "our negative reaction/strategy to the shooting really hurt our image at the last minute" "we seriously underestimated the impact of the shooting" "we need to take this opportunity to reform the KMT and promote a younger set of leaders and a fresh image", etc. etc. and then suddenly the KMT candidate announces he's going to fight for nullifying the election. and then the very same KMT representative, who was just gracious in defeat, makes an about face and says "the irregularities are unacceptable, there must be a recount if not another election!" No basis for the allegations were presented. No evidence had been found. All this took place in less than 10 minutes! Even the TV anchor was flabbergasted. There wasn't a single case of irregularities reported by KMT (the losers) monitors at the polling centers until days after the election. Just watch the telecast! Just watch the news! It's all right there before your eyes.
Does anyone else get "Tell me what you want!" by the Spice Girls playing in his head each and every time he stops by this thread? "what-you-really-really-want..."
There were plenty of cases reported 'ON' the day. I was able to see a few different news channels 'live' on the election day, plus from online media sources that updates every few minutes. Although I doubt the recount will make up the difference in votes, unless some irregularities were to hold true across many ballet centers. I am not against pro-independence or reunifications, and was not against Mr Chen when he won the first election, but over the last four years, his and the government's performance has being fairly terrible when it comes to the economy, unemployment and crime rate. (especially the economy since I worked in the financial industry in Taiwan and alarmingly, Taiwan's per capita income has decreased by a couple of thousand US dollars over the last four years). To say the election was not clouded by the shooting would be bias from either side. How then, does one explain the sudden jump in Chen's poll by 5-8% in one day? (a figure reported by just about all media sources a couple of days prior to the election). Maybe its not his fault the shooting occured, but to say that didn't have a effect on the election result would be in denial. I was not against the referendum when it was proposed, but I agree with max14 that the questions thought out by the DDP on the referendum were outright stupid. -G'day-
True but I wasn't the one who brought it up. I was just making the point to another poster that Taiwanese speak a dialect different from the majority of the mainland in reference to comparing Taiwan's situation like Ireland. Where the Irish speak and use English widely but also use Gaelic widely.
If you see my comments to michecon, you will see that I was not the one who brought this up in regards to another poster who was claiming that reunification should occur because Taiwan and China share a common language which is only partially true. As for the differences between Taiwanese and Mandarin they are much more different than Spanish, Italian and Portugese which all share the same basic grammer, sentence structure and verbal conjugations. Yet no one would recommend making Portugal, Spain and Italy one country because of that. The language difference between Taiwanese and Mandarin isn't an end all of the independence argument but it contributes by showing a key social difference. As for calm down. You shold address that to the people posting that the Taiwanese are traitors and haters of Chinese.
I understand your point, but you far-fetched it. If anything, it shows a common cultural background rather than "a key social difference". Chinese language system is character based, unlike pronounciation based language system in the west, many of them from Latin. Cantonese, Fujianese etc are all based on the same Chinese language system. Cantonese are actually more akin to anciant Chinese language. In south China, you probabily can't understand the dialect out 10 miles from your local, but there isn't any "key social difference".
at this moment im for keeping status quo, obviously, neither side is mature enough to make good of the situation. under democracy theory, a country must go through three smooth, undisputed, free democratic elections, before it becomes a legit, established democracy. I was hoping that this election would finish up the trifecta for fair elections, but it gets an asterix instead.
list one, if you can. do you mean the one with granddaughter voting for semi-blind grandmother? do you mean the one with the vote counter not raising her hands high enough for the cameraman to provide the "good camera angle"? come on? can you list a SINGLE irregularity with the poll that could have affected the outcome? that wasn't dispelled outright? that wasn't brought up hours if not days after the decision to fight the election? can you provide ANY conclusive evidence at all? if you can't, then what you're doing is precisely what people are despising the KMT/PFP for. Smearing Taiwan's good democratic name for cheap short-term political gains. watch this clip. listen to what your own KMT/PFP legislators were saying right before they lost the election. right before Lien/Soong turned the entire KMT?PFP into sore losers. you tell me whether you detect a hint of irony, or dare i say it hypocrisy? http://play.rbn.com/?url=mactv/mactv/demand/200403200130100kss.rm&proto=rtsp Watch from the 17th minute until the end. whether he did a good or bad job has nothing to do with the validity of this election. the shooting is no basis for invalidating the election. the KMT/PFP themselves said as much before the elections. i already provided the link. lien chan is just a loser when he whines that "it's unfair that my opponent got shot!" when just before the election he was quoting the election law "the election must go on unless one of the candidates DIES". the topic of the referendum has no bearing on its validity. and stupid or not, your attitude and the attitude of thousands of pro-KMT/PFP members like you, allowed the Chinese to claim a major political victory over Taiwan the very next day in all its newspapers. good job!
Please, could you not assume and put words in my mouth? Quoting from my previous post "Although I doubt the recount will make up the difference in votes, unless some irregularities were to hold true across many ballet centers". There were a few that was mentioned (out of like 10,000 voting centers), but like I said, not enough to make up the votes even if it was recounted in my opinion. I was pointing out your previous statement of not one irregularity occured in the election as untrue, an irregularity could have occured on both sides, whether its the Pan Green or Pan Blue. Did I say it has anything to do with the validity of this election? I was just voicing my disatisfaction with his and the government's performance over the last 4 years. I said the shooting helped him with the win, never did I say because of the shooting, the election should be invalid (unless its staged, which I doubted in another thread, although the the inccident is indeed clouded). Even DDP spokesman admitted that the shooting helped Chen over the line as he was behind in all polls by a substancial margin before the event took place. I was just stating a fact. Again, please don't put words in my mouth, I never said the referendum has any bearing on the election validity, only stated my opinion on the usefullness of it (or lack of it). Pro KMT/PFP? I live there and pay my taxes there, I don't have those political ideologies that you may have, I just want a better life after four years of stagnant economy (from when growing 5-7% a year was a norm), high unemployment (highest since the 60s), increasing crime rate, national debt etc etc. I didn't mind the change of government 4 years ago, but now I do. Peace. -G'day-
You TI supporters should enjoy this moment because it won't last very long. Here is why. Chen SB used to be an American running dog and listened to its master's commands. But recently he doesn't want to obey orders any more. He wants to do things by his own will and barks all the time. His master is busy doing other things, so the master is annoyed at this barking and trouble making dog. After finding out the master is not happy with him, this dog switched to another master, i.e. Li Denghui and the Japanese. Why do you think the Chinese foreign minister called Colin Powell? Here is why. The Chinese foreign minister told Colin Powell something like this (in spirit): "Look, you are the master of this crazy dog. If you don't get rid of this dog, I will kill this dog and destroy your dog house." Wait and see, the U.S. will abondand Chen SB.
Below I repost a Q&A from the BBC on the Taiwan situation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3560355.stm Q&A: Taiwan election 'conspiracy' Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian, who was re-elected on 20 March just hours after being shot, has denied vote-rigging played any part in his victory. BBC News Online looks into the background to the main allegations and conspiracy theories gripping the island. Was the shooting stage-managed? Most of the suspicions about the shooting stem from claims made within hours of the event by Sisy Chen, a maverick legislator opposed to the president. She alleged that the president had been taken to a hospital that was several kilometres away, rather than to the nearest available treatment centre. The government pointed out that wherever the president travels, one hospital is designated to treat him in case of emergency because of security concerns, and this was where he had been taken. But within hours of Ms Chen's comments, rumours started spreading across Taiwan, by word of mouth and by text message, that the shooting was faked. According to these rumours, the shooting was designed to cause a surge of sympathy for the president and tip the extremely tight race in his favour. After the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) lost the election, its candidate Lien Chan appeared to incite further speculation by referring to unspecified "doubts" and calling the result unfair. What evidence is there to back these claims? Very little, at least so far. KMT supporters told BBC News Online they based their suspicions on the fact there was no photographic evidence of the attack taking place, and no by-standers had come forward to say they had seen the perpetrators. But Mr Chen was campaigning when the attack took place, in a motorcade driving through the streets of the southern city of Tainan. On such occasions, it is usual for the only cameras to be on board the motorcade, ahead of or behind the president's vehicle. Cameras therefore have a poor and patchy view of what is going on immediately around him. To complicate matters further, some pictures were released soon after the attack which local TV said showed a red, blood mark on Mr Chen's jacket. The pictures were poor quality and were reproduced by several international news organisations, including BBC News Online. Pictures were then released of Mr Chen arriving at hospital, but on these, no blood was visible. The discrepancy - which spawned further conspiracy theories - was explained when it turned out that the red mark on the TV pictures was in fact a safety belt, and Mr Chen's injuries had only left blood marks on the inside of his clothes. As for the lack of witnesses, such election events are also marked by the letting off of large numbers of fire-crackers as the motorcade passes. In the confusion and noise - with everyone looking at the president rather than the crowd - it is less surprising that nobody seemed to notice the attacker. And what evidence is there the attack was genuine? The government released pictures of Mr Chen being operated on, pictures of the bullet's damage to his stomach and to the knee of his Vice-President Annette Lu, and pictures of the bullet itself. Protests have been peaceful so far Investigators have interviewed more than 400 people and now believe two shots were fired. They have also narrowed down the scene of the attack to a 50-metre stretch of road, and they have found two bullet casings. But they have been less convincing in terms of finding any suspects, or motive. Until they do so, the confrontational mood spawned by such a tight election result will likely lead to more mistrust. What about KMT claims about spoiled ballots? Since Mr Chen won the election by less than 30,000 votes, the KMT has also raised questions about the relatively high number of spoiled votes, again calling the result into question. Election authorities declared a total of 337,000 ballots invalid, a sharp increase from the 120,000-140,000 spoiled in the past two presidential polls. Independent observers have not raised any concerns about the increase, and since the counting was open to scrutiny by both campaigns, it is difficult to see how anything could have been done to favour one over another. A more likely explanation is that civic groups disillusioned with the nature and style of Taiwan politics persuaded people to spoil ballots as a protest vote. The most visible such group was the Million Invalid Ballot Alliance, which received some media coverage and called on people to reject both candidates. So what happens next? Good question. There has never been this type of showdown in Taiwan's short history of democracy, so politicians and lawyers have no precedents to go on. The KMT has instituted legal action against the election authorities in the hope the courts will rule the election was illegal. But under Taiwan's election law, election authorities appear to have acted correctly, since the poll should only have been suspended if Mr Chen has been killed in the shooting. The KMT also says it wants a recount of the votes as soon as possible, a demand that Mr Chen's Democratic Progressive Party has said it would be happy to go along with. But after legislators from the two parties came to blows over the issue on Tuesday, it was not clear if their statements were genuine, or issued to make political capital. Much will now depend on the KMT protests being staged outside the president's office in Taipei. These have so far been peaceful and relatively small. The government may be hoping that if it can hold on until the number of protesters begins to dwindle, the crisis can be defused without further trouble. The KMT, well aware of that possibility, will be looking for ways to keep Mr Chen's government on the defensive.
it was precisely because of insensitive chinese like you that TI has become mainstream in Taiwan. and precisely because of people like you that Chen keeps on getting elected. keep it up. we're counting on you!
My apologies, to the dogs! Most of the dogs are loyal and lovely. Using the dog analogy to describe Chen SB is really an insult to most of the dogs.
When it comes down to it, I bet the majority of average Chinese and Taiwanese care more about making a good living for their family, keep a good job and not have their kids killed in a war. (whether taiwan claims independence or not) For them, status quo would mean no disruption to their livelihood, and that's what both side should be aming at. Unfortunately as china continue to grow stronger, taiwan will always be a pawn between the big powers
I can't believe such exciting thread exists here in D&D. TI ... yeah, dream on. Chen is such a clown with that academy award gun-shot victim performance. Taiwan is part of China, Mainland is part of China. We'll be unified under one flag.
