Just when we all thought that WikiLeaks had shot its bolt and no one was paying much attention to the ongoing trickle of classified information, a new document dump by the whistleblowing Web site has stirred up a hornet’s nest of interest here in humble Taiwan.
The world’s most-wanted gossiper-in-chief Julian Assange and company have come up trumps, treating us to a treasure trove of political tittle-tattle straight from the bowels of the world’s most famous de facto embassy.
According to diplomatic cables sent by former American Institute in Taiwan head Steven Young back to his bosses in Washington a couple of years ago, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) visited a fortune teller in the months running up to the 2008 presidential election.
The clueless clairvoyant allegedly told Wang that his then-opponent Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would drop out of the presidential race because of his ongoing special fund court case and that Wang would be nominated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to take his place. Wang’s unable mentor would probably do a better job selling beef noodle soup on a Changhua County street. On the strength of this, Wang visited then-Taoyuan County commissioner Eric Chu (朱立倫) and asked him to be his vice presidential candidate.
The source of all this juicy gossip, I hear you ask?
Step forward Mr County Commissioner on-call himself — Chu.
You can just picture the scene: Chu and Young sitting around one of those tables made out of a tree trunk at Chu’s place in Taoyuan, chewing the fat as the cable news blares away in the background.
Chu pouring tea, while Young spits sunflower seed cases onto the floor.
Chu also apparently told Young that Ma thought KMT chairman-for-all-eternity Lien Chan (連戰) was “naive” and had lost influence in China.
The most illuminating thing to come out of all this, though, is not that all KMT members are a bunch of back-stabbing blaggards — that we knew all along — but that Wang consults fortune tellers about his political fortunes.
Furthermore, he actually believes them and bases his political negotiations on their predictions.
Now we know why Wang usually sits on the fence.
I have to admit that having met Chu once when he visited our community I found him utterly underwhelming in person, but I now have newfound respect for the guy.
Chu, of course, denied making the comments and tried to cast doubt on the truthfulness of the cables by saying that they were nothing more than Young’s personal interpretation of their conversations.
Any doubt, however, was well and truly dispelled when everyone’s favorite slaphead Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) came out and said that cable leaks revealing his criticism of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as being “too academic” and “a weak leader” were completely accurate.
Get out of that one, Eric.
It’s quite ironic that the cables should describe Chu as a “rising star” in the KMT, as his star is now likely to fade without a trace having committed the cardinal Confucian sin of dissing KMT elders.
However, before Chu gets transferred to his new position as Taiwan Provincial Governor, we should at least thank him for confirming one thing that many Taiwan watchers have suspected for a long, long time — that absolutely no one in their right mind, either in the KMT or among the communist hordes in China — ever listens to a word that Lien Chan says.
Sometimes one even has to give the KMT some credit.
Joe Doufu is a Taipei-based satirist.
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