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EDITORIAL: Enough muddle-headed warnings

After six weeks of bitter wrangling over the voting format to be used in next week's legislative election and referendums, it seemed that a deal had been reached. But the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) suddenly announced on Monday that it would boycott both referendums, including its own. A boycott also looks likely for the two UN referendums to be held during the presidential election in March.

The decision came just a few weeks after KMT vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) allegedly told American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt that the KMT was insisting on the two-step voting process to frustrate the DPP-initiated referendum on entering the UN using the name "Taiwan."

It would be interesting to know if Burghardt's conversations with any of the KMT officials he met during his visit touched on the subject of a boycott, as any decision to shun the UN plebiscite in March would certainly fall in line with Washington's very public opposition to the process.

Despite repeated assurances from Washington that it is not interfering in Taiwan's democracy, the notion that multiple warnings from the world's most powerful nation and Taiwan's sole security guarantor will have no effect on public sentiment ahead of the poll is disingenuous, to say the least.

The message emanating from Washington is that the referendum will alter the cross-strait "status quo," but the question must be asked again: Why is it that only Taiwan is capable of disturbing this fictional balancing act? Beijing's mounting aggression has never earned it public rebukes of this order.

In a September speech to the US-Taiwan Business Council, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Thomas Christensen accused President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of using the referendum to "change Taiwan's name" and "risk the security interests of the Taiwan people for short term political gain."

Perhaps Christensen could have been asked to suggest which political party in the democratic world does not attempt to influence public opinion to further its ambitions. The Republicans certainly did so when it made the case for the invasion of Iraq.

What the US is afraid of is the Taiwanese electorate making a statement that Beijing -- and KMT hardliners for that matter -- doesn't want to hear.

It is hard to know what Washington expects from a country that has been unshackled from five decades of authoritarian rule. Surely this would not include a free and democratic people staying silent indefinitely and thus inviting a repressive state to interfere with and ultimately dominate them?

Even now it is not clear if US strategists are banking on economic reform leading to democratic reform in China and a peaceful settlement in the Taiwan Strait. But even if this is the case, it is not going to happen anytime soon. Hard-headed officials must therefore understand that Taiwan's status cannot remain in limbo indefinitely if China issues threats every few months and continues to pack its coastline with ordnance.

Taiwanese are not stupid; indeed, they are reliably pragmatic. Poll after poll has shown that the overwhelming majority are not interested in making dramatic ideological gambits in the cause of independence or unification.

So, if Washington believes that this thing called "democracy" has value outside the US, then it should show respect to Taiwanese by desisting with patronizing language and partisan doomsaying. Voters of goodwill are putting up with enough cynical, anti-democratic behavior from the KMT without having to factor in muddle-headed warnings from Washington.
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