Posted on 03/29/2004 7:22:32 PM PST by RWR8189
Wall Street Journal
March 23, 2004
TAIPEI -- With televised pictures of demonstrators clashing Sunday morning with riot police in Taiwan’s southern port city of Kaohsiung, crowds surrounding the judicial offices in Taichung, Taiwan’s second largest city, and thousands rallying outside the presidential mansion in Taipei, the impression conveyed to the rest of the world is that Taiwan’s young democracy is deeply polarized and potentially unraveling politically. It’s not the case -- or at least not yet.
As the new week begins, Taiwan’s streets are calm, the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang/KMT) supporters out front of the presidential offices remain vocal but nonviolent, and the vast majority of Taiwanese are going about their business as usual.
Of course, last Saturday’s presidential election produced a razor-thin victory for the Democratic Progressive Party candidate and incumbent president Chen Shui-bian. After a hotly contested campaign, Mr. Chen received only 29,000 more votes than Lien Chan, his KMT opponent. With just under 13 million ballots cast, President Chen’s margin of victory was a minuscule 0.22%. What the election confirmed is that Taiwan is a country marked by a sharp partisan division between the political coalitions led by the DPP and the KMT.
But this is not the same thing as saying that Taiwan is a deeply polarized society. There is an underlying reality to current Taiwanese politics that is being lost in headlines surrounding the attempted assassination of President Chen last Friday and the post-election protests. In the U.S., much was made of the different approaches toward cross-Strait relations advocated by the two parties, with the KMT arguing for a less confrontational policy towards China. Yet what was largely ignored was the more fundamental policy shift of the KMT away from advocating eventual unification with the mainland. And, indeed, as the campaign progressed and President Chen began to catch up in the polls, the KMT increasingly put forward policy initiatives and reform proposals -- including even constitutional reforms -- that were designed to appeal to the citizens of Taiwan as Taiwanese.
The reason for the KMT shift was that it was good politics. As recent nationwide polls have shown, the percentage of Taiwan’s citizens who consider themselves “Chinese” has dropped significantly over the past decade, from nearly a quarter of the population to less than 8% today. At the same time, now more than 40% of the citizens of the Republic of China consider themselves “Taiwanese,” while a similar number think of themselves as “Chinese-Taiwanese.”
Social scientists and political analysts have ascribed this transformation to a number of factors, such as generational changes and ethnic divisions within Taiwan itself. But this misses the obvious. Taiwanese identity has grown in direct relation to the progress of democracy on the island. The people of Taiwan increasingly have come to think of themselves as Taiwanese as they have established themselves over the past decade as a self-governing people. It’s no surprise then that President Chen -- who is more associated with protecting Taiwan’s sovereign democratic status than his KMT opponent -- was able to increase his percentage of the total presidential vote from 39% in 2000 to just over 50% last Saturday.
The present danger is that by going to the streets and calling for the election’s nullification, Lien Chan and James Soong, his running mate, are following a path that could easily spin out of control. They want the results of the election cancelled on the grounds that President Chen gained his victory by manipulating the voting environment -- by means of a “mysterious” assassination attempt -- and by a large number of ballots being tossed out as invalid during the count. Putting aside the preposterous accusation that the president staged his own shooting, and the multiple, credible reasons why this year’s election resulted in a high number of invalidated votes, there is no basis under Taiwan’s election laws for nullifying the election at this point -- let alone doing so in the complete absence of any plausible evidence that President Chen or his campaign did something illegal.
So far, the Bush administration has taken a hands-off approach to the election, officially noting that the results are in dispute and calling for the different parties to “use the established legal mechanisms to resolve any questions about the election results.” There has been no congratulatory message sent to President Chen. Washington’s desire is not to be seen as intruding in Taiwan’s political process.
But in Taiwan, America’s neutrality is being used by the KMT to give legitimacy to their calls to nullify the election. The KMT leadership is now telling its crowds that the U.S. has not sent a message to President Chen precisely because it also has doubts about the legitimacy of the results. This view is given further fuel by the fact that the U.S. representative in Taiwan, Doug Paal, is widely seen in Taipei as being personally opposed to President’s Chen’s re-election and hostile to the DDP as a whole.
As a result, intentionally or not, Washington is helping to keep alive a dispute that could jeopardize the very progress Taiwan has made in becoming a stable liberal democracy. By this Friday, Taiwan’s Central Election Commission will certify that President Chen is the president-elect, as it is required to do so by law. At that point, challenges about voting irregularities or illegal behavior by candidates can be entertained by the courts. Nevertheless, the challenges neither change the president-elect’s status nor the timeline for his taking office. If the U.S. wants to avoid further instability inside Taiwan and, potentially, in cross-Strait relations, it should accept that certification. Given George Bush’s own history of having to deal with a disputed razor-thin victory in 2000, one would think that he, more than anyone, would understand the need to bring some finality to such a matter.
Mr. Schmitt is executive director of the Project for the New American Century.
The Chinese are well aware of this as well.
I am not sure what the game is. I trust that they are playing it well.
At least that is my hope at the present time.
We shall see................
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