The appearance of three full-page attack ads paid for by the KMT and targeting ex-ranking member James Soong
To be sure, Taiwan faces enormous challenges, and solid debate about how to meet them would have been valuable. But the campaign we now expect is about as edifying as a bout of mud-wrestling.
It is also worth noting that the KMT broke the law in its attack ads. The law requires that the sources of political advertisements are correctly attributed, and only one of the three ads contained this information. These regulations are in turn based on a simple ethical principle: that people who make public accusations are responsible for their statements. They also reflect the fact that Taiwan's elections have always been plagued by the publication of anonymous accusations, known as "black letters"
Stance is not an issue here; Lien's campaign has freely admitted financing the ads. Readers of strongly pro-Soong papers must, however, have been startled to see the usual vociferous criticism of the KMT, and President Lee Teng-hui
Which brings us to the real lesson of this incident: if you have enough money, you can do as you please. Taiwan's young democracy is threatened by the fact that one party, the KMT, has huge resources, and it uses them to win elections. Vote-buying is on the way out, increasingly limited to rural areas. But the bottomless pockets are still intact, and the party is concentrating more and more on the use of expensive advertising campaigns, as yesterday's newspapers dramatically illustrated.
By coincidence, yesterday saw the introduction of the Executive Yuan's version of the Political Party Law as well as regulations governing political donations, and a law relating to lobbying. This package of regulations is intended to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive legal framework governing the operations of political parties -- in effect, to lay down the rules that have been so conspicuously lacking. The central issue, of course, is how to handle the finances of the KMT and its business empire, something that Lien himself raised with his proposal at the beginning of the year to place the KMT assets into trust. These laws are supposed to enable the realization of his proposal.
Reformers will be sorely disappointed by the Executive Yuan's version of this legislation. Rather than marking a step forward in the evolution of Taiwan's political system, all the draft laws do on the core issue of the KMT's assets is ratify the status quo. For the last several years, the KMT has been withdrawing from day-to-day management of enterprises and concentrating on managing a portfolio of stakes in various companies. The proposed legislation will only affect the few remaining often unprofitable companies solely in KMT hands.
Even if the new laws are passed, as the KMT expects, before the election, the problem of a chronically tilted playing field will remain and a chance for valuable reform will have been wasted and China's verbal attacks on Taiwan's democracy as a sham will hurt -- because they have the sting of truth.
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