Mon, Aug 09, 2004 page8

• Bulletgate missive misses the mark

  • By Ming-chi Wu吳明基
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  Briton Sir Ernest Benn (1875-1954) once stated, "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." Benn's words very well describe the crusade Taiwan's pan-blues have entertained since President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) were shot on March 19 while campaigning in Tainan.

  Since that fateful day, the pan-blues have held that the assassination attempt was a scam, that there were irregularities in the ballot count, that huge numbers of military personnel were kept from voting, that the invalid ballot count was suspiciously high, and that therefore the March 20 presidential elections should be nullified.

  A fancy pamphlet titled "Bulletgate" has been distributed throughout the US in an attempt to win hearts and minds to the pan-blue cause. Instead of the desired outcome, however, the pan-blue diatribe has people in Washington shaking their heads.

  Instead of winning over the US Congress, the think tank world and the media with "Bulletgate" the pan-blue alliance is playing Russian roulette with its own credibility. Not only has the pamphlet turned out to be an inappropriate lobby ploy, it is an embarrassment for the nation that this internal political affair was brought into US politics by the pan-blues.

  The day after the publication landed in US congressional offices, we at the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) received a copy sent to us by a Congressional office, accompanied by the comment of a staffer saying: "This is an example of how NOT to lobby."

  The 2000 US presidential election was hotly contested and was finally decided by a Supreme Court vote. While many Democrats believe to this day that Al Gore should have been declared president, the whole country decided to move forward and accept the rule of law as underscored by the Supreme Court.

  US politicians and policy makers understand that Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party are committed to the rule of law and have consistently refused to use the illegal, unconstitutional means that the pan-blue alliance has suggested to resolve the 2004 election disputes. Such non-constitutional means have included asking Chen to declare a state of emergency -- which to all intents and purposes means martial law -- and using the huge powers such a declaration would give him to order a recount on his own initiative rather than use the constitutionally established procedure.

  The US emphasis on the rule of law has been loud and clear, and US policymakers have shown that they trust Chen to carry out his legal responsibilities.

  On March 26, the White House released a statement congratulating Chen and the people of Taiwan on the "successful conclusion of their March 20 presidential election."

  The statement continued, "We recognize that there are pending legal challenges to the results of the March 20 election. We applaud the people of Taiwan for embracing established legal mechanisms and rejecting extra-legal options to resolve their differences. We reject calls for violence, which threaten the very democratic principles to which we and the people of Taiwan are committed."

  At an April 21 hearing on the Taiwan Relations Act, Representative Dan Burton asked a series of questions regarding the election -- about the investigation into the shooting incident and the number of military personnel who were allegedly kept from voting. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia James Kelly gave a clear response: "[Our] view is essentially, these are questions that the people and the institutions of Taiwan are more than capable of resolving for themselves. And our view is that the process is proceeding in which these questions are going to be resolved in a legitimate and appropriate way."

  When Burton again asked about an investigation into the shooting, Kelly was even more forceful.

  "Even assuming that the inauguration goes ahead on May 20, this coming December there's going to be elections for the Legislative Yuan, for the legislative body. This is going to provide another opportunity for the people of Taiwan to make their views known. So there is a system of checks and balances going on there," he said.

  In short, move forward and stop whining.

  On June 24, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde introduced and passed resolution HCR462, the 25th Anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act. The reason Hyde waited until June to introduce and pass the resolution was because he wanted to wait until the commotion surrounding Taiwan's election was over. Obviously, Hyde, along with the rest of the US Congress, had determined that Chen would be Taiwan's president for the next four years.

  Five days after the passage of the TRA resolution though, the pan-blue lobbyists were still not ready to give up. Having exhausted interest in their conspiracy theory at home in Taiwan, they decided to renew their effort to take their slanderous campaign to the other side of the Pacific. As early as April, the pan-blues had begun to publish advertisements in American newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Capitol Hill magazine The Hill. But when these ads seemed to fall on deaf ears, they decided to start distributing their "Bulletgate" pamphlet on Capitol Hill -- a glossy brochure full of unsubstantiated accusations.

  Some in the pan-blue camp might say that they are simply lobbying for a cause on Capitol Hill, something that we at FAPA have done for over 20 years now. The crucial difference is that FAPA has always lobbied for US support for democracy for all the people of Taiwan. We have never attacked persons or political parties to score partisan points. When FAPA was established over 20 years ago, Taiwan was under martial law and under the rule of a dictatorship. So FAPA has always brought out into the open the issues of human rights and personal and political freedoms, enabling the US to help the people of Taiwan regain their voice.

  By distributing their "Bulletgate" pamphlet on Capitol Hill, the pan-blues are playing partisan politics on foreign grounds. They attack the president and his party, and thus all the president's supporters. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has never refrained from hanging dirty laundry in public in a foreign country for the rest of the world to see. On Oct. 20, 2003 for instance, in a speech at a Heritage Foundation/American Enterprise Institute sponsored luncheon in Washington DC, KMT Chairman Lien Chan(連戰) was notable for his rigorous criticism of Chen.

  Lien fed his American audience the line that, unlike Chen, Lien himself would not be a "troublemaker," once elected and that he would be "more discreet and prudent," that he would "not add another crisis" to the security problems in East Asia.

  In his speech, Lien offered not one word of criticism of the PRC. And not one word about the more than 500 Chinese missiles in Fujian Province pointed at Taiwan.

  Lien's speech and the "Bulletgate" affair have sullied the KMT/PFP alliance's reputation in Washington, not that of Chen and the pan-green coalition.

  Clearly, Bulletgate has missed the mark.

  Ming-chi Wu is president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs.

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