Yesterday's vote in the Legislative Yuan on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant
Probably it will be more posturing. And some of this is patently absurd. President Chen Shui-bian
Posturing is, however, perhaps better than crass stupidity, which has reigned supreme in the speculation about how the two sides might be reconciled. For example, it has been suggested that the plant be built but not used, in effect suggesting that we spend US$5.2 billion (that's NT$7,800 apiece for every person in Taiwan) for absolutely no reason at all. Or that we should complete the plant but turn it into a museum of nuclear technology. Or that the plant only be used when Taiwan is low on electricity generated from other plants, as if a functioning nuclear power plant that generates electricity only some of the time is somehow less polluting or less dangerous than one in regular use.
That some such folly might be seen as an acceptable compromise worries us more than what otherwise will be the inevitable consequence of the current standoff, dissolution of the legislature and an election fought over the power plant. At least in an election scenario we might find the answer to the most baffling question of all about the plant: Why is the KMT so anxious that it be built?
It seems bizarre that a major political party has been prepared to bring the government to a halt and the economy to its knees over something with an obvious lack of vote-getting power as advocacy of the construction of a large nuclear power plant within 40km of around 4 million people in an area prone to earthquakes.
We regret to say that we have no definitive answer to this question, and it certainly reflects badly on Taiwan's news media, of which we are, of course, a part, that nowhere has this most fundamental question about the plant ever been answered.
It has been rumored that there have been irregularities in the selection of companies to build the plant, that these companies have connections with a certain political party and that enthusiasm for the plant is tempered with an unwillingness to see a web of corrupt practices surrounding the building of the plant fall apart.
We are of course shocked, shocked, that such jaded views should besmirch the good name of a party that has worked tirelessly for the benefit of China with no thought for itself. Admittedly there are no contracts, as we understand it, between Taipower and any of the constructors of the power plant -- with the exception of General Electric of the US -- which might lead one to think that there were massive opportunities for graft and skimming. But heaven forbid that anyone should think that the KMT's enthusiasm for the plant should have anything to do with what by international standards are amazingly lax procedures in the dishing out of plant construction largesse. Where will this reprehensible cynicism end? In the denial of virgin birth?
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