It’s been really interesting watching the pitched battles that have played out in Taiwan this week — a fascinating series of struggles between two sides that obviously dislike each other intensely.
Watching from the sidelines as one side tries to outwit the other with unannounced thrusts and parries has been a real pleasure for an aging hack like myself.
If for one moment you’re thinking I’m talking about pro-independence protesters and their pursuit of charmingly coiffured Chicom negotiator-in-chief Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), then you’re wrong (more on that later).
For now, the focus of my attention is the battle between Lao K (老K, the Chinese Nationalist Party, KMT) and its former suckling and new (and possibly very temporary) Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁).
Yes, love him or hate him, you’ve got to admire the balls of Fu. Not only did he ditch the party after realizing it would rather nominate a corpse for the Hualien race, but then he went on to absolutely trounce the party’s (second choice) candidate Du Li-hua (杜麗華) by 85,532 votes to 38,603.
While you can’t argue with that result, you have to take into account the years of brainwashing residents of the eastern county have undergone thanks to a free propaganda rag-cum-newspaper that Fu bankrolls in the Hualien area called the Eastern Express (東方快報), a subject I’ve covered before.
But then, we in Taiwan are all too aware of the power of brainwashing. I’m sure there are a few veterans out there who still believe that it won’t be too long before we retake the mainland.
Fu probably won on the strength of all the promises he has made down the years about the construction of the Suhua Freeway, and how it will be a panacea for all Hualien’s problems. Once the freeway is built, Hualien will be battling it out with California in the economic stakes, or so Fu would have them believe.
Problem is, he might not be around long enough to deliver on his promises. You see, Fu has a couple of legal cases pending that will almost certainly result in him doing porridge in the very near future, which is why he raised a few eyebrows this week when he named his newly divorced wife as deputy commissioner.
A canny idea, and a decision that demonstrated some forward thinking on Fu’s part following the Wu Chun-li (吳俊立) debacle in Taitung four years ago. It was also a step up from the usual tactic of having your missus stand for election once you’ve been locked up.
Fu probably decided upon his plan when, despite losing the election, Premier and former KMT enforcer Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) insisted a few days later that the party had “chosen the right candidate.”
Was Wu privy to special information about Fu’s legal situation, perhaps?
Mind you, it’s about time there was a final verdict in Fu’s cases — he was first found guilty in one of them in May 2003. In the meantime, his fellow indictees, who included former Taiwan Pineapple chairman Huang Tsung-hung (黃宗宏), have either served or are serving their sentences.
What that means is that either Fu has an extremely good legal team that has been able to delay proceedings to this day, or those stories we hear about the pan-blue camp’s relationship with the judiciary are true.
Should the Supreme Court rule on Fu’s case anytime soon, there will be even more reason to believe such tales.
Fu must have thought he had it all covered. Even if he got sent down, the missus would help him keep the county “in the family,” so to speak.
But Fu didn’t bank on the full force of the central government being used to thwart him, including an instant riposte from the Ministry of the Interior, which declared his divorce invalid because he had forgotten to change his wife’s household registration until reminded of it.
A deflated Fu finally admitted defeat. Battle against local political circle won by the KMT, for once.
Now all Fu has to do is convince his better half to remarry him. The thing is, Mrs Fu doesn’t seem too keen, which is only to be expected, as her hubby will probably be behind bars before you can say “stir crazy.”
Hey, it’s no fun being a single parent. Believe me, I found that out when my beloved Cathy was off on her eastern exile.
Talking about trips into the unknown, I was thinking the other day — given recent events in Italy and the Taiwanese habit of latching on to trends from other countries — how lucky Chen Yunlin is that this week’s negotiations are being held in Taichung, the city of nothingness.
Remember how shortly after Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi became famous for lobbing his footwear at then-US president George W. Bush, it also became popular here for protesters to throw shoes or flip-flops?
Well, after aging Italian stallion Silvio Berlusconi’s recent close encounter with a plaster model of the Milan Cathedral, I couldn’t help thinking that if the talks had been held in Taipei or Kaohsiung, then some Democratic Progressive Party city councilor or pro-independence wig might have lobbed a model of Taipei 101 or the former British consulate at Takao (打狗) in Chen’s direction.
Luckily for Chen, Taichung is devoid of memorable landmarks, so the worst he could have expected was a soggy suncake in his mush. Either that, or a bucket of water representing Sun Moon Lake.
While we’re on the subject of food fights, the US beef brouhaha just keeps refusing to go away.
Not content with clogging up our legislature for the best part of a month with their plans to sell us intestines, eyeballs and every other ingredient from a recipe for a witch’s potion, the Aberdeen Angus Institute in Taiwan (AIT) is now holding “media advisory” video-conferences to try to convince us that it’s safe to eat parts of a cow you can’t even pronounce.
I wouldn’t mind it if these ten-gallon hat wearing cowboys, who spend every waking minute trying to push their bovine baloney down our throats, were prepared to put their T-bone where their mouth is.
But it turns out that a little bird whose friend attended AIT’s Christmas bash this week told me that said friend asked the carving technician standing over a big beef joint whether the steaming hunk of dead cow in question was in fact all the way from the US of A.
“No,” he replied. “It’s from either Australia or New Zealand.”
Ha! Let’s see those highfalutin hypocrites over at AIT worm their way out of that one.
Got something to tell Johnny? Get it off your chest: Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
As China steps up a campaign to diplomatically isolate and squeeze Taiwan, it has become more imperative than ever that Taipei play a greater role internationally with the support of the democratic world. To help safeguard its autonomous status, Taiwan needs to go beyond bolstering its defenses with weapons like anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. With the help of its international backers, it must also expand its diplomatic footprint globally. But are Taiwan’s foreign friends willing to translate their rhetoric into action by helping Taipei carve out more international space for itself? Beating back China’s effort to turn Taiwan into an international pariah
Typhoon Krathon made landfall in southwestern Taiwan last week, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and flooding, cutting power to more than 170,000 homes and water supply to more than 400,000 homes, and leading to more than 600 injuries and four deaths. Due to the typhoon, schools and offices across the nation were ordered to close for two to four days, stirring up familiar controversies over whether local governments’ decisions to call typhoon days were appropriate. The typhoon’s center made landfall in Kaohsiung’s Siaogang District (小港) at noon on Thursday, but it weakened into a tropical depression early on Friday, and its structure
Taiwan is facing multiple economic challenges due to internal and external pressures. Internal challenges include energy transition, upgrading industries, a declining birthrate and an aging population. External challenges are technology competition between the US and China, international supply chain restructuring and global economic uncertainty. All of these issues complicate Taiwan’s economic situation. Taiwan’s reliance on fossil fuel imports not only threatens the stability of energy supply, but also goes against the global trend of carbon reduction. The government should continue to promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, as well as energy storage technology, to diversify energy supply. It
RSS