It is always encouraging to see members of the international community pay attention to Taiwan, whose travails as it navigates the rough seas of its relations with China are often conveniently ignored for the sake of “larger” considerations.
Given the potential ramifications of tomorrow’s presidential elections for regional security and Taipei’s relations with Beijing, it is unsurprising that an army of foreign reporters and academics would be parachuted into Taiwan to observe its rambunctious democracy at work.
Equally welcome is the arrival of international observers who have been invited by local organizations to monitor the elections to ensure that the process is fair and does justice to the sacrifices made by previous generations of Taiwanese who, for decades, did not have the privilege of selecting their leader.
In a highly charged campaign marked by scandals — from the possible falsification of evidence used in allegations against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to claims that intelligence agencies engaged in illegal surveillance against her — the presence of neutral electoral monitors from abroad could provide a much-needed dose of sobriety to the whole affair. Or it should have.
The problem is that the organizations behind the invitations extended to the international monitors have at times appeared more interested in underscoring which candidate they hope will win rather than making sure that the electoral process remains transparent and is not tampered with.
One could argue that such an outcome was inevitable, a consequence of the vast resource disparity that exists between the two principal political parties involved in the elections. Despite claims to the contrary, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) remains one of the wealthiest political entities in the world, turning Tsai into a bit of a David against the KMT Goliath, an imbalance that has only been exacerbated by the overt support given the KMT by Beijing, big business, institutional investors and even some elements within the White House.
As a result, whether it was intended or not, the International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan (ICFET), which counts the likes of DPP legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) as its executive chairman, has come across as pretty green.
Not to be bested, the pan-blue side recently announced that it had invited its own international monitors, a group that includes former American Institute in Taiwan director Douglas Paal.
Anyone who accuses the minds behind the ICFET of being too green and therefore partial should look at the political affiliations of the Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation, the think tank that invited Paal and others to come to Taiwan to observe the elections. Its chairman, Louis Tzen (鄭文華), is closely affiliated with the KMT’s in-house think tank, the National Policy Foundation.
Unfortunately for the majority of international monitors who did come to Taiwan as impartial observers, the politicization of the groups risks undermining their credibility. This, in turn, could make it more difficult for their findings to be taken seriously and could give rise to accusations that they are taking sides in the election — especially if serious irregularities were to be uncovered by the observer groups.
Whether they knew it or not, international observers have been sucked into the vortex of green-blue politics in Taiwan. Through no fault of theirs, they arrive here facing a credibility handicap, victims of a political system whose impartiality is oftentimes observed in the breach.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS