Sat, Dec 20, 2008 page8

• Johnny Neihu's News Watch: Messrs Oblivious go to Washington

  • By Johnny Neihu 強尼內湖
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  It was a meeting that must have been joyful, yet tense.

  We’re at the Presidential Office. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) shakes the hand of his former teacher at Harvard, Jerome Cohen, now a professor of law at New York University and adjunct senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

  In March 2006, Cohen warmly welcomed his former student and chaired a talk that Ma gave to the Council on Foreign Relations when he was Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman and likely presidential candidate. He was in the US to press the flesh and drum up support for his potential presidential run. Back then Ma was relatively fresh-faced, selling himself and his party as the essential government-in-waiting.

  This month, however, Ma has been struggling to contain negative press from his government’s handling of protests against a Chinese envoy’s visit and the detention without charge of a number of DPP figureheads.

  Two items of negative press were articles by Cohen himself — in the South China Morning Post and the China Times (in Chinese), including the quite radical suggestion that the government set up an independent commission to probe the detentions.

  The muted Taiwanese response? “An independent commission? What’s that?”

  Still, this past week, Cohen backed his former student by saying that Taiwan was not returning to White Terror-style rule (comments to this effect were “hyperbole” and “sheer accumulated hatred,” he said) — even opining that there was good reason for banning the Dalai Lama from Taiwan for the time being.

  So Cohen came out and backed Ma on some things at least. There’s a lot to be said for loyalty at strained moments in a longstanding relationship. When else is loyalty of real value?

  But Cohen has made no comment to my knowledge on comments by prosecutors in the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) case that, had they been made by US officials in their own jurisdiction, would surely bring the prosecutorial system into disrepute.

  Cohen was only here for a few days. A pity. I would’ve liked to take him out on the town, sink a few draft Taiwan Beers over garlic peanuts and fried tofu, tell some old stories and introduce him to a few people with dissenting opinions so he could get a fuller picture than the chats he had with the government rollout of judicial officials and prosecutors.

  Because what were they going to tell this veteran jurist? The truth? Furrow their brows and say “Sometimes our judiciary is not meant to be just”? Or “Guilty or innocent, Chen’s done for”? Or “Go back to America, you meddling barbarian, Ma’s days are numbered”?

  The two points I fault Cohen on are not appreciating the bigger picture of how the KMT goes about its business and, perhaps more seriously, relativizing modern-day KMT sins in the light of its mission to unify China.

  Not quite oblivious, perhaps. But let’s be fair. Cohen is a professional. He knows his law, and even in the throes of jet lag he knows what to say and what not to say on juridical matters. He was also prepared to say things about Taiwan’s legal system that must have deeply embarrassed his one-time student.

  He has his say, gets his message across, gives the right people a pat on the back, then goes home. Don’t you think the KMT wishes it had people of Cohen’s competence and communicability on call to send to Washington as the need arises?

  Which brings us to The Heritage Foundation.

  There was a time when the KMT could send attractive, half-literate envoys to spin a web of conviction and confection around US congresspeople and get the results. Who can forget the late Soong Mayling (宋美齡) entrancing Capitol Hill with her classic speech in 1943? Back in those days, a Chinese woman with a charming frock, a cultured accent and an anti-communist lexicon could sway rich, old white men in slobber-stained suits longing for a quick feel up the cheongsam.

  They loved her so much that they were willing to underwrite her idiot husband and his band of merry thieves for decades to come. But I suspect the same will not be said of the KMT government’s unholy trinity of spokesmen (mandarin, cop, politician) that hit Washington this month to barrack for Ma and his men.

  The bumbling trio should have known that they were going to have to put their best feet forward when they discovered that not only members of the audience but also the moderator were signatories to two open letters published in the Taipei Times expressing grave reservations about Taiwanese justice.

  Sadly, their feet were bound. The mandarin gave a presentation that was deadly dull and poorly organized, complete with PowerPoint dictation.

  The cop delivered a superficial explanation of police duties and casualties on the day of the protests, and topped it off with a ludicrously biased selection of photos that depicted the police as heroic victims.

  But the real star of the show was the politician, KMT Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑), who referred to the audience as “you guys” and to those responsible for indicting Chen as “we.”

  You have to watch the video (www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev120808c.cfm) to truly appreciate it, but let me offer a sample. Heritage staffer John Tkacik asks Hsieh a question on judicial process. Read on ... this stuff is gold:

  Tkacik: The real concern, I think, is the difference in the application of the law to various political people. … Maybe I didn’t hear you right, Mr Hsieh, but I think you said that both Ma Ying-jeou and [Annette] Lu [呂秀蓮] were indicted, when they were interviewed by the prosecutor, they had enough evidence to go straight to an indictment, therefore they didn’t need to detain them. Is that what you were saying?

  Hsieh: That’s what I said, exactly.

  Tkacik: So, if you don’t have enough evidence to indict, then you do detain them? Is that it?

  Hsieh: That’s not the case, uh—

  Tkacik: I’m just trying to … I’m just trying to—

  Hsieh: (raising voice) I’ll try to clarify because that might mislead people that think that way …

  For me, however, the killer moment was when Hsieh implied that Los Angeles had a far more grievous history of police misconduct than Taiwan.

  Alright, so LA is not a model city for police-suspect relations, but dude, next time you want to make a wisecrack about the Rodney King beating and the riots following his attackers’ acquittal, don’t do it at The Heritage Foundation! And don’t pause after the joke in the hope the audience will laugh. Because not only will they think you’re a prick, the bipartisan, stony silence among liberals and conservatives alike as they marvel at your attempt at ingratiation will seal the deal.

  Mr Hsieh, your audience thought you were a complete tool. And it doesn’t help a government’s image when a patronizing showman who loves talking about himself in the same breath as he slanders an unindicted suspect (by referring to him as a likely criminal) is the head of the legislative Judiciary, Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.

  If one ever needed a clincher to show people just how contemptuous the KMT machine and its outer cogs are toward Americans and how ignorant (yet somehow fearful) they are of their institutions and traditions, watch this video. It starts slowly, but like gangrene it takes you limb by limb, until by the end you just sit there, immobilized with pain and disbelief — and the occasional gasp — at just how appalling it all is.

  Still, there has been no mention of the diplomatic idiocy of these gentlemen as far as I could find. Not in the pan-blue press. Not in the pan-green press.

  No one seems to understand just how embarrassing and damaging these men were to the credibility of each and every Taiwanese.

  They treated The Heritage Foundation and its audience of the day like a bunch of wide-eyed yokels, making very clear to the skeptics who look beyond the headlines just what kind of disingenuous flotsam is running the show in Taiwan. But back home the only outrage worth a salt was in a Taipei Times editorial and the fumings of yours truly.

  Speaking of widespread obliviousness, let’s finish with a cameo appearance by Jason Yuan (袁健生), Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to Washington.

  Yuan, whose sticky fingers are still stained with ink from the Bulletgate booklet fiasco, has so thoroughly irritated the Taiwanese press corps — including reporters from the pro-KMT papers — with his grim attitude that relations have become most strained.

  My spy tells me: “After a recent briefing, Yuan gave his old friend, the China Times’ retired Washington correspondent Norman Fu [傅建中], an on-the-record interview covering some of the things he said at the briefing.

  “Fu, in his usual brusque manner, ridiculed the rest of the press corps in his column for not getting the information that he received, indicating that they were incapable reporters.

  “The press corps, in turn, drafted a protest letter to Yuan, but at the last minute decided not to send it because it was too strong.

  “They did, however, decide to boycott a briefing by deputy representative Tung Kuo-yu [董國猷], as a symbolic protest.

  “In response, Yuan told the press he was suspending his briefings.”

  Yep, that’s exactly the kind of envoy a government wants on Capitol Hill. Yet there’s no indication that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is aware of any of this or has considered the risk this man poses to communicating with Washington.

  Truly, ignorance may be bliss, but obliviousness is rapture.

  Got something to tell Johnny? Go on, get it off your chest. Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but be sure to put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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