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EDITORIAL: Why is the US silent on the KMT?

What an intriguing coincidence.

After years of pan-blue-camp stonewalling in the legislative Procedure Committee over the arms purchase bill, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt visits Taiwan in the month before legislative elections and meets, among other leaders, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

Within the week, the KMT-dominated committee relents and sends the arms bill to the legislative floor, a move almost equivalent to passing the legislation.

We were not privy to the conversation between Ma and Burghardt, but the timing of the two events -- combined with Burghardt's lecturing of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) -- points to differential treatment for the two main parties from Taiwan's only substantial ally. It augurs poorly.

The US cannot be blamed for preferring one presidential ticket over another -- or one party dominating the legislature and not the other. But here is a question that US officials can ask themselves: Is the long-term damage that can be inflicted on Taiwan's national -- and regional -- stability and core democratic structures and practices from one-sided intervention worth the short-term political gain?

When Burghardt criticized Chen -- however undiplomatic his wording -- even Chen supporters could see beyond the reproachful tone. They could appreciate that Burghardt probably meant well, even if certain superiors at the State Department and the White House decidedly do not.

What these allies might not appreciate is the lack of parity in Washington's dealings with the KMT. Chen, for all his faults, has been scapegoated for most of his time as president over the obstructiveness of not only Beijing apparatchiks but also pro-China elements in the pan-blue camp.

And because most US officials are serenely ignorant of Taiwanese domestic politics and do not read Chinese, they do not understand that the balance of KMT efforts in the legislature has been to grind the Chen administration to a halt -- even while directly insulting the US -- and to hell with ordinary people caught up in the circus.

The pan-blue camp continues to smear government agencies as partisan without so much as a logical argument or evidence. The latest agency to take another hit is the Central Election Commission, described by KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) as a DPP "election tool." If Wu's accusation had any merit, there would be justification for bringing in independent election monitors. Yet his party wants to make the commission a partisan agency run by legislative stooges along the lines of the unconstitutional National Communications Commission.

The US has been steadfast in its silence over the KMT's agenda of discrediting administrative systems. It therefore must be asked if anyone among serving US officials other than AIT Director Stephen Young has requisite understanding of these problems.

It would have been gratifying if Burghardt had publicly warned Ma and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) of the corrosive impact of denigrating public institutions for partisan gain. Perhaps Burghardt could have publicly discussed the instability that might follow a legislative run on the authority of executive agencies -- including holding entire budgets to ransom over the most trivial acts and shutting down entire systems of government. Or shutting down meaningful arms spending.

But no. None of this is publicly accountable.

We can only pray that this is not the kind of governance and leadership that Washington would wish for Taiwan -- or tolerate in the name of expediency.
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