In its crackdown on "black gold" (
While there have been some serious blunders by prosecutors along the way, their efforts are finally reaching into places that have long been off limits.
Over the past year 164 public representatives have been indicted.
On Thursday of this week, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (
Such a goal, if realized, would be a major breakthrough for human rights in Taiwan, activists say. But the move will not be easy; statistics show that at least 80 percent of the public is opposed to the doing away with the death penalty.
But the president's greatest success has been, ironically for the erstwhile pro-independence hardliner, in cross-strait relations.
Before the elections, the KMT, much like Beijing, was predicting that if the DPP was ever in power, China would rain missiles on Taiwan and that young men would have to trade in their "A-bian" hats for military helmets.
Those prognostications were far from the truth. While relations with China have not improved dramatically, they haven't sunk to the lows that were originally expected. Nor have they been as bad as they were in 1995-96 and 1999 under KMT rule.
Opposition lawmakers have meddled in cross-strait affairs as well, making it impossible for Nobel Laureate Lee Yuan-tseh's (
But Chen's steady release of goodwill gestures to China and efforts by the government to open up the "small three links," a move more symbolic than it is substantial, have made it difficult for China and the opposition in Taiwan to push the government too far off course.
"Given the predicament Chen is in, he has done a better-than-expected job at guarding the nation's security," said Andy Chang (張五岳), a China watcher at Tamkang University.
One would hope that such a glimmer of success would spread elsewhere, not necessarily for the DPP's sake, but for Taiwan.
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