Taiwan elections: For love and Sean
Connery By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI - It is indicative of the strange nature
of Taiwan's presidential election campaign that the two
hottest topics in the past two weeks, including as they
do some four hours of face-to-face debate by the
presidential candidates and military rumblings from
across the Taiwan Strait, concern President Chen
Shui-bian's declaration of love for his wife and the
possibility of a visit to the island by movie actor Sean
Connery.
To some it may seem strange that there
has been little mention of the real issues raised in the
debates, such as highly charged issues relating to
mainland China, the economy and the island's defense -
the stuff by which political debate is typically made.
But given that both sides of the political line, meaning
the pan-blues versus the pan-greens, are saying nearly
the same thing, there is little for them to debate
about. Therefore, it all comes down to comparatively
marginal issues, such as hairstyles and character.
During the first presidential debate a fortnight
ago, Chen used the time to defend his character as such,
by countering criticism from his opponent Lien Chan,
representing the so-called pan-blue alliance of the
Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT), of which
Lien is chairman, and the People First Party (PFP), that
he was too mercurial, too changeable in his moods and
policies to be a good leader, by saying: "My hairstyle
has never changed over the years nor my love for my
wife. Besides, I've never abused her and never will."
To an outsider, the remark might have seemed
almost a non sequitur. What could hairstyles have to do
with leadership qualities? But to a great number of
Taiwanese watching the debate, it was as if Chen had
suddenly thrown a grenade at his opponent.
Rumors that Lien had an ugly past as a
wife-beater have circulated in Taiwan for many years.
Yet they have never really been featured in the public
eye. The reason for this is obscure. After all, Taiwan's
defamation laws are a joke, and groundless character
assassination has become a standard operating procedure
among opposition politicians as a way to bait ruling
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cabinet members.
Nevertheless, the rumors about Lien are
something that many people know of, but which have gone
largely unremarked on - certainly they have never been a
handicap in Lien's career - until now.
Chen,
however, was not the first to raise these rumors in the
election campaign. That dubious honor goes to the
Presbyterian Church, which, on December 22 last year,
threw its weight behind President Chen's re-election
campaign without naming Chen as such. The church's
general secretary, the Reverend William J K Lo, said the
church supported a presidential candidate who believed
that Taiwan and China were separate countries - a clear
reference to Chen - while adding: "A leader should not
use public funds for personal benefit or condone
domestic violence."
Lo's remarks referred to the
spousal abuse allegations against Lien and the
continuing investigation of Lien's running mate, James
Soong, over claims that he pocketed large sums of party
funds while serving as its secretary general in the
early 1990s.
At the time, none of the
commentariat picked up on this connection and it was not
until Chen made his comments during the presidential
debate that the accusations and the denials really
started flying.
Domestic abuse turns to tax
evasion The day after the debate, Lien's wife
made a public statement denying the beating claim,
telling Chen, "You have to back up what you say with
evidence." Chen disingenuously told a rally the same
day, "I just said that my love for my wife will never
change and that I've never beaten her. Then someone
jumps up and says that I have to apologize. What kind of
world is this?"
A couple of days later Hsiao
Bi-khim, a legislator from Chen's DPP, published a
letter from a former neighbor of Lien saying that he
recalled some decades ago hearing Lien's maid say that
her boss beat his wife. This "evidence" was met with
scorn by Lien's followers, who immediately demanded an
apology from Hsiao. Even DPP supporters began to feel
that raising the abuse rumors on so flimsy a pretext was
more bad taste than smart politics. The matter might
have rested there were it not for the dramatic
intervention of Next magazine.
Next, owned by
Hong Kong entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, has, since its launch
two years ago, evolved into a curious mixture of
celebrity tittle-tattle and genuine investigative
journalism. It has produced some interesting scoops, but
none more dramatic than this week's edition, in which
were published what the magazine says are extracts from
letters written by Lien Chan's daughter Lien Hui-hsin to
a school friend between 1979 and 1983. The letters cast
a baleful light on the Lien household.
"I hate
Chinese schools and I hate seeing my father beat my
mother all the time. I want to leave it. I have to leave
it. I told her, Why not divorce him? She said that if
she did, then she would not get a cent and neither of us
children will be allowed to see her either," says one
letter written in 1980.
The letters, which were
written in English, came with original envelopes with
the return address being that of Lien's home in central
Taipei.
Despite this, Lien Hui-hsin immediately
denied she wrote the letters. The handwriting was not
hers, she claimed, adding that she never had such a
friend as the one the letters are addressed to and
anyway, that her English grammar was far superior to
that appearing in the letters. Next, on the other hand,
says a handwriting expert is satisfied that the writing
is Lien Hui-hsin's and if Lien Hui-hsin wants to sue,
she is welcome to do so - the magazine would be happy to
go before a court and tell what it knows. What might
seem odd about the letters is that they were written in
English. But this detail tends to bolster public belief
in their authenticity: Lien Hui-hsin spent her childhood
in the United States and English was her first and
preferred language.
And it doesn't stop there.
Lien's daughter also figured in more
allegations/revelations about the family this week when
the DPP claimed that she evaded paying taxes of NT$400
million (US$12 million) because of her father's
political influence. On July 30, 1991, Lien Hui-hsin's
tax return was called into question, but as soon as an
investigation was started in Taipei city, Lien Hui-hsin
changed her household registration to Taipei county. The
change in address meant a change in the jurisdiction of
the investigating authority - from the city to the
county tax department. At the time, the Taipei county
tax department just happened to be run by one Lin
Sui-sheng, who also served as a board member of two
foundations owned by the Lien family. The investigation
was subsequently dropped.
In addition to these
accusations, a DPP campaign commercial likening Lien to
another notorious tax evader, former US vice president
Spiro Agnew, has been running all week. And then there
is the question of how Lien Hui-hsin could manage at the
age of two years old to be the owner of agricultural
land, the purchase of which is forbidden to anyone
except registered farmers.
All told, the Liens
have been under a veritable deluge of mud. And while the
pan-blues have tried to hit back, raising questions
about Chen Shui-bian's wife's stock-market transactions
during his presidency, they have failed to hit home,
especially after the Securities and Futures Commission
announced that it had investigated the first lady's
stock trades and found nothing untoward.
Sean
Connery goes missing Running in tandem with all
the mudslinging was the strange case of the missing film
star. Sean Connery, the original James Bond, was
supposed to have received an invitation from the
presidential office to take part in the "228
Hand-in-Hand Rally" scheduled to take place this
Saturday, February 28. The rally takes the form of a
massive human chain - more than a million people are
expected to take part - from the northernmost point of
Taiwan to its southern tip. Its purpose is to show
support for Taiwan's de facto independent status and to
show Taiwan's solidarity in opposing China's missile
threat. Really the rally is intended as a show of
Taiwanese nationalist sentiment, inspired by a similar
event that took place in the Baltic countries in 1989.
Held on the anniversary of a massacre of
Taiwanese by Chiang Kai-shek's troops in 1947, at 2:28pm
the participants will join hands and turn east, thereby
turning their backs on China, and chant: "Taiwan yes,
China no."
Connery was supposed to have accepted
the invitation to join, it being thought that a staunch
supporter of Scotland's independence would have some
sympathy for Taiwan's own independence struggle. Then
last weekend Hwang Yih-jiau, the spokesman for the PFP,
said Connery had canceled his visit because the PFP had
explained to him that the rally was "political" in
nature. If Hwang thought this was clever he was
seriously mistaken, because there was an immediate
outcry from Taiwanese who, though utterly indifferent to
the 228 protest, had hoped to catch a glimpse of a
favorite film star. The PFP was roundly and widely
condemned, and Hwang was seen as scoring a particularly
crass personal goal.
Even there, there is still
mystery as to whether Connery ever intended to come at
all. His agent denies that there was ever even the
slightest consideration. A Taiwanese businessman who
claims to be Connery's close friend says he wanted to
come but was indeed put off by the PFP claim that he
would be used politically by the DPP. The truth,
however, remains elusive.
Election campaigns
remain the same Readers might by this time be
wondering what kind of election campaign this is. Thus
far there has been little mention of the real issues
raised in the debates, which include China, the economy,
taxation, education, defense - the stuff that political
debate is usually about.
The answer to the
public's puzzlement, and the seemingly trivial nature of
the campaign's concerns, is that the platforms of the
both sides are so similar that there is almost nothing
to choose between them and little for them to debate
about. The pan-blues, as Asia Times Online has reported
before, have made themselves electable by adopting a
raft of DPP policies, slightly modified in places
perhaps, but not substantially different. They have
flip-flopped on the referendum law, constitutional
change and even Taiwan's future status, while the
election issue that was to be central to their campaign
- the economy - has simply evaporated as Taiwan's
economy grew at more than 5 percent in the final quarter
of last year and is on track to doing just as well this
quarter. Thus, having lost the economy as an issue, the
pan-blues have yet to find another. As one newspaper
editorial wrote: "You need to be a forensic pathologist
to be able to see significant differences between
pan-blue and pan-green proposals."
So it all
comes down to comparatively marginal issues such as
character. Given that both sides are saying nearly the
same thing, the decision seems to rest on whom voters
trust most. Can they trust the pan-blues, the
self-styled architects of Taiwan's prosperity, to manage
things better than the DPP? That is the pan-blues' pitch
to the voters. But can the voters trust the pan-blues -
with a history of corruption, violence and kleptomania -
to keep their hand out of the cookie jar? A newspaper
columnist put it as such: "Given that one cannot really
'vote for the issues' because there aren't any, one has
to 'vote for the man'. The real theme of the election
has to be '[whom] do you trust'?"
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2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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