What is it that's preventing your reporters from giving us a deeper story on Gary Wang (王令麟), the KMT legislator and head of Eastern Multimedia (東森多媒體), who is being held on suspicion of rigging a land deal? This is surely the political/corruption case to beat them all and will define the near-term future of politics and business in Taiwan if it is pushed to its logical conclusion.
Wang is much more than a three-term legislator and head of one of the island's biggest cable TV companies. What is not mentioned in your reports is, perhaps most importantly, that he is the son of Wang You-tseng (王又曾), patriarch of the Rebar Group (力霸集團) of companies and a member of the KMT central standing committee. The senior Wang is about as high as you can go in the KMT's business/political hierarchy and, until the May 31 election, was widely acknowledged as being more powerful than a Cabinet minister, or perhaps even the premier.
Who can forget the image a few years ago of he and Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫), the KMT's other grandaddy of industry, being asked to shake hands in front of the cameras to resolve the latest skirmish in Taiwan's perennial cable TV war by the party's secretary-general, after the GIO Director General had surrendered any pretense about who really ran the government.
More to the point, under the previous government it would have been unthinkable for prosecutors to go after Wang's son. That they now feel emboldened by the new president's desire to clean up corruption in Taiwan is hardly surprising, however. What is going to be really interesting to see is whether they are able to take this one all the way.
When President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was touring Taiwan's diplomatic allies recently, anyone who recalls that famous scene from the cable TV war could not have failed to notice the gray-haired business tycoon following close on the president's heels.
Anthony Lawrance
Taipei, Taiwan
Real victims of the drug war
The article "Europe losing war on drugs, US agency warns" (Sept. 7, page 9) might almost have been amusing, were it not for the millions of people whose lives have been ruined -- not by drugs themselves, but by the costly, futile, and ultimately destructive attempts of most governments to prevent the sale and use of certain mind-altering substances.
The article consisted mostly of hyperbolic quotes from a report by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the USA, a country which now boasts the highest percentage of jailed citizens in the world.
Over half of these inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Normal, hardworking, "respectable" folks who just happened to get caught with a bag of weed.
A college student with a promising future (who also enjoys getting high once in a while) now finds himself in jail, his family bankrupted by the legal fees spent trying to keep him free.
A mother is jailed because she borrows a friend's car, not knowing there's a "stash" in the glove compartment. Her children become wards of the state and are sent to a foster home.
An AIDS patient uses medical marijuana to fight the nausea induced by the "cocktail" of drugs prescribed by his doctors (if you can't keep the medicine "down" long enough to absorb it, it does no good). The DEA prosecutes him and he dies in his sleep, choking on vomit.
A child is condemned to life in a wheelchair because she is caught in the crossfire of a "turf" war between rival drug-dealing gangs -- gangs which would not even be involved with the drug trade if it were legal and well regulated.
A woman is raped because her attacker had to be paroled early, in order to make room in an over-stuffed prison for the aforementioned college student.
These are the real victims of the "War On Drugs."
Meanwhile, the thugs and kingpins who actually make money on the illegal drug trade laugh at our stupidity. They don't want drugs to be legalized, because then their huge profits would dry up and they'd have to actually work for a living -- perhaps growing coffee beans instead of coca.
It would be nice to see this hardline viewpoint balance out with an article representing the fast-growing segment of the population who believe legalization, regulation, and education are the most effective strategies for curbing the ills associated with drug abuse.
I respectfully suggest the following Web sites for further study of this critically important issue:
John Diedrichs
Taipei, Taiwan
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
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