President Chen Shui-bian's (
It was interesting that the major criticism of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Alex Tsai after the speech was that it was late in coming. Actually, Chen said nothing Saturday night that the presidential office had not already offered before. A recount, international participation in the shooting investigation: these had been on the table as of midweek, but KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
That Lien and People First Party Chairman James Soong (
But this week has shown something far more upsetting to anyone who cares not just about democratic processes and the rule of law, but also about simple common sense. Everyone involved in this dispute knows how the balloting process in Taiwan is carried out. Everybody should therefore know quite well that it is a model of openness that other democracies would do well to imitate.
You cannot stuff ballot boxes in Taiwan. The bookkeeping about how many ballot papers are delivered to polling stations, how many are used and how many must be returned is simply too strict. You cannot fraudulently count the vote, since it is carried out in too open a style, and the registration of each ballot is liable to objection from party representatives if there is a hint of partisanship or skullduggery.
All parties involved in the election know this. All of the pan-greens, all of the pan-blues, everyone. You cannot rig a vote in Taiwan under the present system.
There is another thing that people should already know, unless their minds have been rotted by too many bad action films. You cannot "shoot to wound" a man in the stomach standing on a moving vehicle. And yet people believe these things.
Both these events have obvious explanations.
As to the election, Chen and the Democratic Progressive Party won it by a small number of votes. This happens: that is the way the system works.
And as to the shooting, some wacko, his mind turned crazy by the endless diet of pan-blue hate propaganda against Chen in the last few weeks -- the analogies with Hitler, bin Laden, Saddam and the like -- decided that Chen simply couldn't be allowed to win, and tried to kill him to prevent it.
This makes absolute perfect sense. It is a model of events that we can all understand. That does not mean that it is exactly what happened, but it is the most likely chain of events and should do as a working hypothesis for most people, until other evidence comes along. But not for the pan-blues.
What is disturbing about this is not that an election can be challenged: that is a legal right. Nor that losing an election is frustrating: that is human nature.
What is truly disturbing is the way that common sense has simply been thrown aside. Sane and rational people have been willing to overlook the obvious and believe the most preposterous things, rather than face the truth. A large number of people in this country are in the grip of hysterical self-delusion.
Perhaps Taiwan needs psychiatric help.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has
RSS