Chen Shui-bian's metamorphosis 陳水扁的蟲形附身 ---- 人形蟲化記 Taiwan 's embattled president had a few things to get off his chest with columnist Tom Plate 深陷泥沼之中且似乎心有千千結的台灣總統對洋人名專欄作家 Tom Plate 傾訴他的怨與恨 By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist 太平洋前瞻專欄作家 Wednesday, January 17, 2007 Los Angeles --- Seven years ago the man was elected handily by the people and became the first member of his party to become president -- and only the second truly elected president in Taiwan's short history as a democracy. But somewhere in the dank confusion and disarray of his second term, Chen Shui-bian -- no longer the charmer of the Democratic Progressive Party -- woke up one morning and discovered he had been transformed into something like a political insect . How else to describe a man whose political approval ratings now barely notch up into double figures, whose wife is on trial for corruption and whose son-in-law also stands accused of corruption? One prosecutor has said publicly that Chen himself is protected from indictment only because of the office he holds. I threw all this at Taiwan 's embattled president the other night as he was passing through Los Angeles International Airport on his way back to Taipei . We sat in a small conference room with a few of his aides and a small group of scholars. The conversation flowed surprisingly easily. Chen had made a special effort to meet with us and if it had not been for the need to jump back on the charter flight home, he might have stayed much longer. It seemed as if there were a few things he really wanted to get off his chest. In fact, Chen took a strikingly aggressive approach to the cascade of attacks on him, whether coming from within Taiwan or abroad. He quickly dismissed his domestic critics with a scoffing hand wave, calling them all politically motivated ; but when the subject came up of Taiwan 's fiercely commercial -- and partisan -- news media, Taiwan 's president turns into a veritable scorpion of rage . Chen charged that the Taiwan media fakes public-opinion poll results , misleads the outside world about Taiwan and poisons the national atmosphere . " Even our judiciary is led astray by our media ," he charged, adding: "Our media consists of reporters without borders!" Such media overkill plays into the hands of the enemies of an independent Taiwan , the president argued, which includes, to be sure, China : "Eventual unification can't be the only conclusion, it can't be the only option for us. Unlike our opponents [the Kuomintang, or KMT], we do not say, there is a certain outcome..." But the issue is emphatically raised of whether Chen's outspoken advocacy of a political future for Taiwan pointedly that excludes the mainland may unintentionally put his island of 23 million in harm's way. After all, China , with 1.3 billion people and a growing military, has repeatedly and consistently claimed that it would be an act of war were Taipei to declare formal state independence that would effectively preclude eventual mainland integration. "Sovereignty and the issue of independence belong to the people of Taiwan ," he replied, "and is not subject to the jurisdiction of China ." Chen adds that his position on the issue of Taiwan 's future is actually an advocacy of the status quo. In fact, as he says, Taiwan right now is a de facto state, recognized as such by 20 or so other nations and boasting something like the world's 19th largest economy. The island's average annual income is not far from a comparatively healthy US$30,000 per person, and the measured level of people living in poverty is said to be less than 1 percent. Why would the people of Taiwan want to merge with the mainland if it is doing so well on its own? That's a fair point, of course, and the answer involves an unpleasant thought. It is that China might well take the question of Taiwan 's destiny into its own hands and, one way or the other, seek to force the island to rejoin the mainland in the manner of Hong Kong . The sovereignty of the latter now officially resides in Beijing after the formal handover from London in 1997. The former British colony is now officially termed Hong Kong SAR -- for Special Administrative Region. Chen's critics worry that by pushing the envelope, the embattled president might just push the mainland into rolling out and revving up the invasion boats. Better to low-key the independence drum-roll if the people of Taiwan want to sleep better at night: At any time Beijing 's war of words could turn into a different kind of war altogether. But the president was completely unmoved by this line of argument. "If I cannot defend the dignity and safety of this country," he replied, "I'm not worthy of holding this job." With impeachment cries seemingly on the wane, that job is presumably his until sometime next year, when his second term formally runs out. That year also headlines Beijing 's vaunted Summer Olympics. Once that spectacular is over and Beijing has time to take a good long look across the Taiwan Strait at what it regards as a "rogue state" and "breakaway province," Chen will no longer be in office. The question, however, is whether the independence web spun by Chen over the last eight years will be too tensile for anyone on the island to take down easily.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute. 美國加州大學洛杉磯分校亞洲媒體 Date Posted: 1/17/2007 | 
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