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March 24, 2004
You are on the invidual archive page of Taiwan, one last time. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
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Taiwan, one last time
The farce in Taiwan demands one final look before we leave it alone. President Chen proposes an ammendment to the electoral law to allow automatic recounts if the winning margin is less than 1%. An entirely reasonable solution and one that will allow a quick recount and a rapid resolution to all the uncertainty. Without having to rely on courts. Conspiracy theories continue to be spouted over the assassination attempt, even though the Taiwan police themselves can see what a ridiculous notion it is. Responding to KMT and PFP members' skepticism after the president was only slightly injured by the shooting, the CIB chief ruled out the possibility that a sharpshooter could have planned to hit the president without actually exposing him to mortal danger.But the "pan-blue" crowd have gone too far in comparing Chen to bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The picture itself is in the extended entry. Bin Laden is saying "I am terrorist lead bin Laden, and I admire Taiwan's A-Bian [President Chen's common nick-name]". On the flipside in reference to the referendums part of the poll it says "This kind of tactic is an exact copy of election fraud committed by Hussein", with a Hussein saying "I am Hussein, and you will all do as I say." This from the same people who last week had a poster comparing Chen to Hitler. Regardless of their policies this kind of hyperbole has no part in any modern polity and I'm glad the KMT didn't win this election. Tactics like this show they are scum.
I would be grateful for anyone able to provide a full translation.
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/18592 Send a manual trackback ping to this post. Taiwan Excerpt: Simon has more KMT egregiousness.... Weblog: The Gweilo Diaries Tracked: March 25, 2004 12:11 PM
Comments:
Although both parties ran pretty unpleasant campaigns up to the election day, the behaviour of the KMT since just before the vote was announced has been appalling. The rumours about the assassination being a fake were started by an elected KMT lawmaker on TV the night of the shooting, and were heavily implied by Lien Chan in his non-conceding speech on Saturday. Although Chen has proposed this change to the law (basically, changing the rules of the election after the fact - to favour his opponent), it looks like the KMT are not agreeing to it, demanding instead he declares a state of emergency to allow a recount (what a great precedent that would be!). On the bin Laden/Hussein posters - these were actually distributed a few days before the election, and then reprinted afterwards with different wording. There's a bit of discussion about them here: I really think the KMT are destroying themselves with these tactics - there are parliamentary elections at the end of the year, and I'd be amazed if KMT get a fraction of the seats they got last time. David, the only thing I can say to that is it appears many of the KMT's supporters whole-heartedly believe it all too. That scares me a hell of a lot more than the actions of the KMT themselves. posted by: Simon on 03.24.04 at 03:43 PM [permalink]Simon, the point is, all the rumours and innuendo are coming from the senior KMT politicians. It's not that unexpected that life-long KMT supporters will (at least initially) believe what their leaders are telling them. When the smoke starts to clear and the facts become clearer, I'm pretty convinced that a huge number of moderate KMT voters will see things in a different light. Also, I think most Taiwanese are capitalists first, and politics is secondary, so if the protests start hitting the economy just watch out for the backlash! The thing it does do though, is reopen wounds and divisions between the KMT 'mainlanders' and 'native' Taiwanese which have been busy healing over the last 10-20 years. I find that worrying. Just an update on the poster. When they received complaints, this was KMT's considered response: "In addition, bin Laden masterminded the attack on the World Trade Center ... Chen also likes to play games, pulling off tricks just like the Sept. 11 terrorist attack," http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/03/25/2003107634 One of the reasons a lot of people voted KMT was because it was widely believed they would improve Taiwan's image on the world stage - in particular improving links with the U.S. ... posted by: David on 03.25.04 at 01:17 PM [permalink]After reading all the KMT "claims", are they related to the international angry left? posted by: abraxis on 03.26.04 at 12:06 PM [permalink] |
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