Time to step aside, Taiwan's Chen
told By Ting-I Tsai
TAIPEI - Taiwan's opposition parties
officially launched a campaign on Saturday to
demand that the island's embattled President Chen
Shui-bian resign, two days after Chen announced he
would relinquish some of his power to his cabinet.
Thousands of Taiwanese demonstrated in front of
the presidential palace on Saturday.
The
campaign, however, could help Chen's ruling
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) regain some
political ground and create more uncertainties for
the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party's bid to win
the presidential election in 2008, DPP legislators
and political analysts said.
Analysts are
certain that Chen, who has lost much public
support after the exposure of corruption scandals
involving his son-in-law
and
close aides, can no longer play his old trick of
diverting public attention by provoking China with
pro-independence moves, such as drafting a "new
constitution" for the island. Thus, during the
remaining two years of his office, the situation
in the Taiwan Strait will likely remain stable.
"If Chen yields to the opposition parties'
pressure and steps down, it would be very
dramatic," said Emile Sheng, a political scientist
at Taiwan's Soochow University. "If Vice President
Annette Lu takes the office, she would clean up
all of the politician-related scandals, which
would regain some political ground for DPP."
In the wake of the detention of Chen's
son-in-law, Chao Chien-ming, who is accused of
insider trading and has been in custody since May
24, Chen pledged in writing that he would only
exercise the authority entitled by the
constitution and would neither interfere with the
policymaking of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan's
cabinet, nor meddle with DPP operations.
He promised that from now on he and his
family members would behave according to the
highest ethical standards and live up to the
public's expectations. Under the constitution,
Chen's authority includes appointing the premier
and overseeing foreign affairs and relations with
China as well as the island's defense policy.
"President Chen's relinquishing power has
only slowed down the DPP's bleeding but hasn't
stopped it," said DPP legislator Lee Wen-chung.
"Based on political calculations, Chen's stepping
down would be the best solution for the DPP, but
there is no substantial reason yet for us to urge
him to do so."
DPP members have chosen to
stand by Chen, as he hasn't been personally
implicated in any wrongdoing, even though two
former secretaries and his wife have been accused
of corruption over the past two years.
The
protest on Saturday eventually forced KMT chairman
Ma Ying-jeou to change his previous wait-and-see
attitude and formally demand Chen's resignation.
And according to KMT legislators, Ma has asked
them to take further moves in the Legislative
Yuan.
"We have not yet seen the worst for
the party," said DPP legislator Wang Sing-nan, who
said recently that the DPP has already been
"sentenced to death" by the spate of exposed
scandals and now vows to submit a request to expel
Chen from the party, if scandals involving Chen's
family and aides continue to snowball.
Starting in 2003, Chen's wife Wu Shui-chen
was accused of receiving US$200,000 in political
donations - or bribes - from fugitive tycoon Chen
You-hao when her husband was Taipei's mayor in the
late 1990s. Next she was charged with
inappropriately engaging in stock trading during
Chen's first presidential term. The accusations
almost cost Chen his presidential bid in 2004, but
the controversy subsided after Chen vowed to place
the family's property into trust.
However,
Wu is again accused of trading in the local stock
market and is blamed for receiving free gift
certificates as a reward for her involvement in a
department-store merger.
After Wu's cases
came trouble for Chen Che-nan, former deputy
secretary general of the Presidential Office. Chen
has been detained for conducting stock
transactions, while being implicated in receiving
bribes for senior military officers' promotions
and brokering Thai laborers for the construction
of Kaohsiung's scandal-plagued subway system.
Chen's case is believed to be one of the reasons
for the DPP's crushing defeat in the 2005 local
elections, in which the ruling party won only six
out of 23 cities and counties.
Similar
accusations have been raised against Chen
Shui-bian's closest aide, Ma Yung-cheng, who
recently resigned as deputy secretary general of
the Presidential Office.
When the
prosecutors started to investigate Chen's
son-in-law Chao Chien-ming's involvement in an
insider-trading case, a majority of DPP
politicians started to distance themselves from
the first family. Chen's longtime supporter,
former president Lee Teng-hui, also said recently
that leaders should be replaced if they were
incapable of governing.
DPP legislator Lin
Chao-shui, claiming that the seeds for many
mistakes of the administration were sown in Chen's
first term, said: "Chen Shui-bian has completely
exploited the mandate of being 'the first
Taiwanese leader', which has resulted in the DPP's
incapability to check his performance."
Chen has a history of making provocative
moves against mainland China to consolidate his
power when he faces domestic challenges. As the
opposition parties have raised concerns about his
repeated calls to amend Taiwan's constitution,
which Chen vowed to put to a referendum in 2007,
DPP politicians and analysts believe that Chen now
lacks the political clout to take such an
initiative.
Based on analysts'
calculations, neither an impeachment, which
requires a two-thirds majority vote in the
legislature, nor recalling the cabinet could be
realized. But KMT leader Ma Ying-jeou's hesitation
to initiate any kind of action against Chen has
put himself in a difficult position.
Ma's
indecision is based on his own calculations for
his bid in the 2008 presidential election, while
politicians from the opposition parties accused
him of being incapable of reacting to public
anger. KMT legislator Joanna Lei said Ma's
leadership would have been questioned if he had
failed to make the move he made on Saturday to
demand Chen's resignation.
"Taiwan has a
premier with substantial authority. The government
is functioning as usual, without A-bian [Chen's
nickname], and we should take this chance to
figure out the advantages and disadvantages of the
presidential system, cabinet system, and the
semi-presidential system," said Antonio Chiang,
former deputy secretary general of Taiwan's
National Security Council.
Premier Su
Tseng-chang and Vice President Lu are considered
the DPP front-runners for 2008. Even though the
DPP's chances of winning looking rather slim now,
Ma's hesitation on making decisions on a number of
issues, his pro-unification position, and the
KMT's internal power struggles all suggest that it
won't be a cakewalk for Ma to win back power for
the KMT in 2008.
"The chance for Ma to win
in 2008 is 55%, while it is less than 1% for DPP
now. But things are changing," said Chiu Tai-san,
former DPP legislator and vice chairman of the
cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council.
Antonio Chiang echoed Chiu's argument: "It
is just not so easy that the KMT could sit back
and reap" the benefits of the DPP's woes.
Ting-I Tsai is a Taipei-based
freelance writer.
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