Taiwan
poll: The sound and the fury signifying ...
By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI - It is not only Taiwan's presidential election on Saturday that has
raised tensions on the island and drawn the attention of Beijing, Washington
and other powerful capitals. It is also the controversial referendum -
scheduled for the same day - on whether Taiwan should upgrade its defenses
against targeted Chinese missiles and whether it should open negotiations with
China on improving relations, under the right circumstances.
Oddly, despite the sound and the fury, a "yes" vote on the two referendum
questions will change virtually nothing.
The referendum has been extraordinarily controversial abroad. President Chen
Shui-bian's determination to go ahead with it has produced rebukes from United
States President George W Bush, as well as condemnation from French President
Jacques Chirac; Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russia's President
Vladimir Putin all have said in recent weeks that they disapproved of the
referendum.
Taiwan has found itself once again labeled a "troublemaker" by countries more
interested in getting along with China than in furthering human and political
rights.
To a certain extent, the condemnation from France and criticism from Germany
means almost nothing to Taiwan, except to remind the Taiwanese to buy Boeing
rather than Airbus and Japanese bullet trains rather than the French Train a
Grande Vitesse, or TGV. The Bush comment hurt far more - alienating the
Americans is a heinous sin. Bush's condemnation, however, was in part a sop to
the Chinese - China's Premeir Wen Jiabao was visiting at the time -
and a very adept piece of arm-twisting of the Taiwanese. The US, referring to
the Taiwan slap, has said it seeks China's help in persuading North Korea to
eliminate its nuclear weapons program.
For what the US really was concerned about was not the referendum this
Saturday, but what President Chen intended to do with the referendum idea if he
were to be re-elected. Chen has announced that he wants to rewrite the
constitution and have it approved by referendum in 2006 for implementation in
2008. Rewriting Taiwan's constitution possibly, though not necessarily,
involves a number of what China would consider hot-button issues - and the last
thing the US wants is a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
US National Security Council drafted referendum
Eventually, Taiwan got Washington's grudging acceptance of the referendum, but
only after it had surrendered drafting of the questions to the Americans
themselves. Such as they are, the questions to be presented on Saturday are the
product of the US National Security Council.
Nobody on either side of the Pacific wants to comment on speculation that the
Chen government bought US acquiescence in the referendum plan in return for a
promise to consult with Washington and give the US a veto on all future
referendum issues affecting cross-Strait affairs.
The opposition pan-blue alliance, whose presidential candidate Lien Chan of the
Kuomintang (KMT) is challenging Chen, had hoped that US opposition to the
referendum could be turned to its electoral advantage. How inept could a
president be, the pan-blues wondered, to cause a serious rift with the
Americans. But long before the official campaign opened, even before the
Chinese New Year holiday in January, this rift had been effectively healed and
sealed. The pan-blue opposition also includes the KMT splinter group, the
People First Party (PFP), fielding James Soong as the vice presidential
candidate.
The pan-blues, regarded as being closer to Beijing and definitely favored by
China, were left in a quandary. Traditionally they had always opposed a
referendum law on the basis that it would, in principle, eventually allow a
vote on Taiwan independence, which they considered too dangerous to national
security. Then last year, they realized that referendum legislation was popular
with voters and something Chen could use to his re-election campaign's
advantage; thus, they then became advocates of referendum legislation. The bill
that passed in November legalizing referendums, was almost entirely pan-blue
drafted.
And it was badly drafted. So badly drafted that, although the pan-blues thought
they had left no option open for the government to call a referendum, the
president seized on Article 17 of the law, which allows the president to call a
referendum if national sovereignty is endangered, to call the referendum
scheduled for Saturday.
Pan-blues oppose referendum, but can't say 'don't vote'
Since that time, the pan-blues have argued variously that the referendum is
illegal, or unnecessary or both. But their major strategy has been to encourage
people not to pick up the referendum ballot papers. They hope by this mans to
make sure that the number of people voting in the referendum will be below the
threshold needed to make the vote valid.
The Taiwan Referendum Law states that for a vote to be valid one half of all
eligible voters must vote. That means eight million of Taiwan's 16 million
voters must cast a referendum ballot. Given that election turnout will probably
be around 70-75 percent, this means both sides in the presidential race are
hoping to win something like 6 million votes. For the referendum to be valid,
some one third of pan-blue voters will have to disobey the recommendation of
their presidential candidates.
Opinion is divided on what to expect. Some presidential advisers think the
threshold is so high that the referendum is likely to fail, thus clipping Chen
Shui-bian's wings should he be re-elected. Other commentators point out that
Taiwanese like to vote and take it seriously as a civic duty. It is simply hard
to imagine them going into a polling station and refusing to take the ballot.
Of course they might vote "no", but that's fine - only a majority of voters is
needed to carry the questions.
The pan-blues failure to challenge the constitutionality of the referendum
before the Council of Grand Justices has certainly given the impression that
their talk of the referendum's "illegality" is so much sour grapes. In which
case even their own supporters might feel obliged to vote.
Oddly, referendum campaign lacks substance
Like the presidential election campaign itself, the campaign around the
referendum has been curiously devoid of substance. Partly this is because of
the weakness of the questions. The first asks voters to improve increased
spending on anti-missile defenses in the face of China's 500 or so ballistic
missiles targeting Taiwan. The problem here is that the Ministry of National
Defense has already said that it intends to go through on its purchase of
US-made Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems, whatever the result of the
referendum. The deal has already been agreed with the US and the referendum can
only refer to further deals, of which there are none pending.
The second question asks whether Taiwan should negotiate with China to build a
"peace and stability" framework for cross-Strait relations. The problem is that
it is not Taiwan that has hitherto refused to negotiate, but rather China that
will not talk to Taiwan until the Taipei government accepts some version of its
"one China" principle - namely acknowledges that Taiwan is a part of China.
This is something Chen Shui-bian will never do and it is doubtful even that his
opponent Lien Chan could do so, even if he wanted to, unless he also wanted to
face massive civil unrest.
So the ball is not strictly in Beijing's court. Until it adjusts its
negotiating conditions, there is little that Taiwan can do, whatever the result
of the referendum.
There are other reasons for the curious hollowness of the referendum issue. One
is that the pan-blues, pledged as they are to boycott the referendum, boycotted
the series of debates on the questions, five debates to each topic. Thus, it
was left to the government to stand on the "vote yes" and a bizarre ragtag of
independent legislators, social activists and academics to stand on the "no"
side. Perhaps it is not surprising that some of the debating on the "no" side
was just weird.
Some critics say the question should be independence
The unificationist writer Li Ao, for example, criticized the second question,
on negotiation with China, saying it was pointless - an opinion privately
shared even by some ardent fans of the referendum process - and Li berated the
government for not asking a more radical question, such as whether Taiwan
should declare independence.
Aboriginal legislator May Chin spoke against the first, China missile,
question, dressed in full Aboriginal costume complete with facial tattoos,
saying that buying weapons made enemies and advocating that the entire defense
budget be diverted to social programs.
And Tamkang University professor Ruan Ming argued against opening a dialogue
with China on the basis that the Chinese communists - of which he was once one
- were too tricky and too incapable of honoring their promises to be dependable
negotiating partners.
The result of all this is that President Chen repeatedly has said that the
referendum is more important to him than his re-election, but virtually nothing
stands or falls on the answers to the referendum questions. Meanwhile the
pan-blues have the difficult mission of getting people to vote for them - but
not to vote for the referendum. The pan-blues have such an egregious history as
abusers of human and political rights that telling people not to vote is
something they do at their electoral peril.
All of this means that in the final days of the campaign, Taiwan has a
president stressing the importance of a referendum process - the results of
which don't matter - while the opposition deplores that process and would like
people to ignore it but their hands are tied when it comes to explaining why.
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