Editorial: The pan-blues' jive talk is off beat

The pan-blues' latest strategy for trying to avoid embarrassing questions about their relationship with China has apparently been acquired from the Shaggy album Hotshot, in particular the strategy outlined by Shaggy in It wasn't me to solve the problem of his friend RikRok.

RikRok's difficulty is succinctly laid out in the chorus: "Honey came in and she caught me red-handed, creeping with the girl next door/Picture this we were both butt-naked banging on the bathroom floor/How could I forget that I had given her an extra key?"

Shaggy's advice to his friend is simply to deny everything, say "it wasn't me." RikRok finds this strategy unconvincing given the long list of places where his girlfriend has witnessed his antics -- "she even caught me on camera." Shaggy insists; tell her anything you like but don't admit to what was so embarrassingly obvious; "convince her, say you're gay/Never admit to a word when she say."

This is exactly the strategy the pan-blues have adopted when faced with allegations considering their now widely known conspiracy with China. The allegations were raised again by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in an interview with The Washington Post last week. Of course they are nothing new. Two years ago the US academic Bonnie Glaser earned the Chinese Nationlist Party's (KMT) displeasure when she reported that Chinese officials she had been in contact with in Beijing were quite open about their strategy sessions with visiting KMT aparatchiks.

Since then the pan-blue camp has followed a legislative agenda that seems to be almost drawn up by China. Recently the KMT had to ban its legislators from going to China to celebrate the PRC's national day on Oct. 1. A number of pan-blue legislators had been invited for what the invites called "contributions to the interests of China." The pan-blues realize that getting into bed with China is not a vote winner in Taiwanese elections. They also have discovered that even with their lockhold on the majority of Taiwan's media, their extensive interactions across the Taiwan Strait cannot be suppressed for ever. So as well as requiring their camp followers to be more cautious, they are also hoping that outright denial is going to work: "It wasn't us."

People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), in fact, went one better than this yesterday by trying to suggest that these allegations were so preposterous that there must have been some mistake. Chen should come forward publicly and explain whether he indeed said such hurtful things, Soong said. Then he slipped into another diversionary tactic, claiming that Chen "looks down on the Taiwanese people."

How Chen looks down on the people by telling The Post the truth, we do not know. Soong has shown his contempt for the Taiwanese a number of times -- such as in his suppression of Taiwanese-language broadcasting when he was head of the Government Information Office, in the lies he told to cover up KMT murders in the 1980s and in his engineering of Elmer Feng's (馮滬祥) libel case against Chen to provide a reason for jailing Chen in the mid-1980s.

Even in the last presidential election campaign we had a wonderful example of this contempt as Soong tried to explain away the Chung Hsing Bills Finance scandal and the accusation that he had robbed his own party with a story that changed every day and which a three-year-old could see through. It's obvious here who is "insulting the people of Taiwan."

Soong insults our intelligence and sense of morality every time he stands up to speak.

Soong did make one useful suggestion however. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should go public with what is known about the pan-blues and China. DPP Legislator Trong Chai's (蔡同榮) Alliance Against Selling Out Taiwan (反賣台聯盟) no doubt has some juicy evidence. Let's make it public so the "It wasn't us" defense is seen for the nonsense it is.