Taipei Times: Liberal International, a London-based global federation of liberal parties around the world, decided to grant President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) the 2001 Prize for Freedom. As a former president of the organization, could you explain the rationale behind the organization's decision to grant Chen such an honor?
Sir David Steel: The Prize for Freedom was instituted about 12 years ago. And it goes either to somebody who has made a successful contribution to the promotion of liberal democracy, or to somebody who has battled against the suppression of liberal democracy.
In this case, I wasn't at the meeting ... but I assume that each year various political parties nominate somebody for the prize, and they have a discussion and they decide whom to give it to. I don't know who else was in contention this time because I wasn't there.
But I would imagine that the argument was, here is an island which had quite a long period of non-democratic rule, followed by semi-democratic but one-party rule, followed by a democratic change of government. And this is rather remarkable in this part of the world where you have military coups, one-party states and the dominance of China by the Communist Party.
So in that context, the DPP having being a member of Liberal International for some years since 1991 when it first made contact with us, here was somebody [Chen] who has made a very significant contribution and sometimes at some personal cost because -- you know what happened to his wife in the early years ... And the only other person in this part of the world who has received the prize was Martin Lee (
TT: Although Chen has expressed his willingness to travel to Denmark in November to receive the prize, to what extent do you think the president can fulfill his wish considering the expected pressure from Beijing?
Steel: Well, the true answer is I don't know yet. But I hope that the Danish government would take the view that it has nothing to do with them and it is an international meeting that happens to be in Copenhagen. It could be anywhere. And it's an international organization giving an award and it has nothing to do with the Danish government as such. And whether that would wash with Beijing is another matter. I don't know. We have to wait and see.
TT: You were the former co-chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which drew up the blueprint from which Tony Blair's government formed the Scotland Act of 1998. How would you evaluate current Edinburgh-London relations following the operation of the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 that effectively reconvened the parliament that was technically adjourned in 1707?
Steel: The most important thing you should know is that after the election, the government organized a referendum on the proposals and this was supported by 75 percent of the population. And the remaining 25 percent were split into those who did not want any change and just wanted to retain rule from London, and a small minority who said this was not good enough and who wanted total independence from London.
But you can see that 75 percent is a very convincing majority and the present proposals had very solid public support before they were introduced.
If you like, it means we Scots have our cake and eat it too. We have our own autonomy but we also have the advantage of the United Kingdom as a whole -- the economic and political advantages of that but the control of our internal affairs, which we lost 300 years ago when the parliament was abolished. And many people believed that was a mistake. We could have had the union but retained the parliament for domestic affairs because Scottish law was still separate and distinct from English law and yet we had to legislate through the House of Commons all the time.
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