Passport debate: Passports latest stick to beat Chen with

"Whatever I propose, they [the opposition] oppose," President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) told a group of visitors a few months after taking office.

He was then frustrated by the opposition-controlled legislature, which had just passed a revision of the Labor Standards Law to cut the workweek from 48 hours to 84 hours every two weeks. Chen preferred a 44-hour workweek to avoid exacerbating capital flight to China where labor is cheap.

The majority KMT, known for its crony-style relationships with the business community, had originally also favored such a plan, but at the last minute could not resist the temptation to embarrass Chen and his administration by trumping the Cabinet's proposed cut with a deeper cut of their own.

"We were trying to give the president a helping hand, as he had pledged to introduce a 40-hour workweek in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election," KMT lawmaker James Chen (陳健治) said disingenuously at the time.

Now 20 months after the transfer of power, the situation has improved little, as evidenced by the uproar this week over the government's plan to add the words "Issued in Taiwan" in Roman script to the cover of ROC passports.

Intended to reduce the possibility of travelers from Taiwan being mistaken for PRC citizens, the measure has been turned into a heated ideological fray over the status of the country.

Course toward independence?

Pro-unification camps have accused Chen of seeking to put the country on a dangerous course toward independence, blind to the fact that the International Civil Aviation Organization has since 1995 used "TWN," an abbreviation for Taiwan, to identify local travelers, or that few in the rest of the world know what the Republic of China, the country's official title, is. The same abbreviation is also on the machine readable ID strip at the bottom of the laminated page of a Taiwan passport containing the holder's photo and ID details.

New Party lawmaker Elmer Fung (馮滬祥) has branded the planned change an attempt by Chen to tinker with the country's title as stipulated in the Constitution. In a show of protest, he has attempted to arrange a NT$100 million cut by the legislature in the budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Fung's charge is, however, utterly without foundation since the wording on the cover of the passport is an administrative matter under the auspices of the Executive Yuan, not a constitutional issue.

Shooting the messenger

More thoughtful critics of the measure have taken exception to the way the decision was made and announced.

KMT lawmaker Kwan Yuk-noan (關沃暖), who earlier gave conditional support for the policy, said he now opposed it, as Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) had been passed over during the decision-making process.

PFP legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) objected to the venue of the announcement. "It is inappropriate for Chen to portray the policy shift as a gift to the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), a pro-independence group, on its 20th anniversary," she said.

Chen called the announcement a "birthday present" to the group.

"The government should concentrate on reviving the economy and shun doing things that may intensify cross-strait tensions," Lee said.

The PFP has suggested denying the foreign ministry NT$7.5 million in funds earmarked for replacing outdated or damaged passports.