In any other country, a crudely produced sex guidebook written by a nobody -- a mere 20 copies of which were imported -- would not attract any special attention, let alone become a hot news item. But in Taiwan precisely this sort of trash has made waves in the nation's capital.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was enraged by the Japanese sex guide Paradise in Taiwan (極樂台灣), seeing it as an insult to the city and even invoking the Criminal Code to try and stop it. Ma ordered the seizure of the book. Book importers were interrogated by police and found themselves at the mercy of the criminal justice system.
What an awe-inspiring air of righteousness Ma has clothed himself in, defending the integrity of both nation and city, and delivering a tough lesson to those shamelessly sex-mad Japanese. But his management of the situation has hardly been faultless.
In a democracy, when the government seizes publications of any nature -- political or pornographic -- questions are raised about the extent to which the country's Constitution protects freedom of publication. Paradise in Taiwan may be a guide to Taiwan's sex industry, but does it really approach "obscenity," as defined in the Criminal Code? Should it be treated any differently from other pornographic publications? Further, even if seizure of the book is lawful, is it constitutional?
Although Ma studied law, he has clearly based his treatment of Paradise in Taiwan not on the criminal law, nor on constitutional law, but on morality. Ma's charge that this book "offended the citizens of Taipei" is a moral accusation.
But morality is not law. If a book can be seized because it "offended the citizens of Taipei," then the number of other publications that could be confiscated is virtually limitless.
The real reason that Ma has banned Paradise in Taiwan is that he is offended by it. The book has frustrated his anti-obscenity campaign, causing him to lose face. It was fury born of humiliation that prompted Ma to order the seizure of the guidebook. That was his first mistake.
His second mistake was to make a mountain out of a molehill. If the author of Paradise in Taiwan were famous, or if the book were a bestseller -- or if it were entirely fictional or even unthinkably obscene -- Ma's indignation would be somewhat justified. But by giving the matter such a high priority, Ma has, as we Chinese say, "used a battle axe to kill a chicken."
Ma clearly overreacted, unlike Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who downplayed the entire matter.
Since becoming mayor, Ma has constantly been in the news. On city government matters of all shapes and sizes, it has been Ma who has made all official statements, rendering the heads of the various bureaus and departments effectively voiceless. In the case of Paradise in Taiwan, a statement by the directors of either the Department of Information or Police Headquarters would have sufficed. Ma, however, has insisted on being commander in chief, as if he were the only one capable of handling a crisis.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has criticized Ma for being a showman, and frankly, that is fair comment. His han-dling of the book issue makes his showmanship perfectly clear.
The unwarranted seizure of goods; the building up of trifling issues into matters of national indignation and the failure to authorize those who should have been authorized. On this single affair, Ma has made three mistakes.
If Ma isn't aware of these mistakes -- or if he fails to learn from them -- he won't have much of a future.
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
Translated by Scudder Smith
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