Tue, Oct 12, 2010 page8

• THE LIBERTY TIMES EDITORIAL: Secret meetings and their dangers

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  A delegation led by Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Chen Zhimin (陳智敏) visited Taiwan between Sept. 13 and Sept. 18. The delegates met officials from Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior, Coast Guard Administration and the executive and judicial branches. They also visited local police units in Taoyuan and Nantou counties, among others. Chen’s official title made the political significance of the visit all too clear. The trip was first reported by a Chinese state media outlet, the China News Service, on Sept. 27. The government has remained silent on details of the schedule, what was discussed at the meetings, and whether any agreements were reached, excluding even legislators.

  Clearly, such secrecy has become the pattern for interaction between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government has made a habit of preventing democratic monitoring of cross-strait affairs and keeps the public in the dark while the KMT and the CCP make their deals behind closed doors.

  In China’s authoritarian one-party state, there is of course no need to publicize information. Taiwan, however, is a democratic country, but the government has chosen to emulate China and ignores both the public’s right to know and the lawmakers’ right to monitor government policy, while colluding with the Chinese government. According to some Taiwanese officials, the Ma administration refrained from informing the Taiwanese media about Chen’s visit at the request of Beijing because a good host should respect the wishes of a guest. The government thus disgracefully turned its back on a basic principle of democracy at the behest of China.

  This raises the question of how many closed door deals have been reached between the KMT and CCP over the past two years. Take, for example, Taiwan’s attendance at the World Health Assembly. In closed-door KMT-CCP negotiations, China agreed to allow Taiwan observer status, instead of membership, under the name of “Chinese Taipei.”

  After that, the two parties held secret negotiations about the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), with the government revealing no details to the Taiwanese people from the draft stages through to the signing of the agreement. It even overruled requests to hold a referendum on the ECFA because the content of the agreement had not been finalized.

  After the agreement was signed, the government arrogantly demanded that the legislature screen and approve the ECFA as a single package, denying the possibility of a substantive legislative review. These are the few examples we are aware of and there is no way of knowing how many agreements or understandings have been reached between the KMT and the CCP in other instances, like the recent secret visit by Chen.

  All these signs indicate that Taiwan is in danger. The Ma administration may be democratically elected, but it has departed from the democratic path completely and uses its administrative powers to overrule the public, the true masters of the nation.

  The purpose is to supplant the will of the Taiwanese people with Ma’s will to and substitute the KMT-CCP consensus for mainstream opinion.

  This brazen political manipulation will deprive people of their right to speak up and ensure the nation’s future is decided by the two Chinese parties, the KMT and CCP.

  To achieve this, the two have intentionally boycotted and blocked every referendum proposal because they highlight the principle that sovereignty rests with the people. A good example is how they collaborated to block the proposed ECFA referendums.

  What is frightening is that the KMT and the CCP are not satisfied at having silenced the Taiwanese public. After all, Taiwan is a democratic state where people have various channels through which to express different opinions from the common understanding reached by the two parties. As a result, the CCP and the KMT have resorted to closed-door, secret negotiations to deprive the Taiwanese of their right to know.

  When Chen visited, the Taiwanese government cooperated every step of the way. How could the public and lawmakers have monitored the trip if they were told nothing about it? If Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) make secret “inspection tours” to Taiwan in future, will the Ma administration behave in the same way? The government might even secretly sign a capitulation agreement with Beijing. If that happened and the two parties collude to let China annex Taiwan, Taiwan’s fate will be sealed without the knowledge of the Taiwanese people. How would the international community react to such a development?

  It is important that Taiwanese remain on their guard. During the visit of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), Ma sent a large number of police to drive protesters away — including those holding national flags — in order to protect his Chinese guest. When Chen visited, nothing of what he talked about or what agreements he may have signed was divulged to the public. Many Taiwanese don’t even know he was here.

  This secretive approach to negotiations is precisely what Beijing wants, because it allows the two parties to decide Taiwan’s future without the consent of the Taiwanese people. As the public pin their hopes on the special municipality elections next month and the 2012 presidential election, the KMT and the CCP have already moved on to the next stage where they collude to bring about unification. The public must be aware of this two-faced strategy.

  TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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