Obama urges action with health system at ‘breaking point’

AFP, WASHINGTON
Friday, Sep 11, 2009, Page 1

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday demanded action now from Congress to fix a health system reduced to “breaking point,” vowing to end the moral taint that deprives millions of Americans of treatment.

In a bold bid to assert leadership as a fractious debate rattles his young administration, Obama strode into a highly charged and rare joint address to Congress and rejected some conservative attacks on his plan as lies.

“We did not come here to fear the future, we came here to shape it,” Obama roared, reprising the reformist zeal that powered his triumphant election campaign, but which has been sullied by months in Washington’s partisan swamp.

After a summer of political fury, Obama offered the most detailed outline of his reform plan yet, warned more Americans would die if Congress did nothing, and told Republicans not to waste his time by trying to kill the plan.

“The time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action ... now is the time to deliver on healthcare,” Obama said in a speech punctuated by 27 standing ovations.

“Our collective failure to meet this challenge — year after year, decade after decade, has led us to the breaking point,” he said promising healthcare for the first time to 47 million uninsured Americans.

Though Obama did offer an olive branch to Republicans, including a promise to tackle liability suits which make insurance unaffordable for some doctors, latent political tensions spilled over in the chamber.

Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina shattered protocol and shouted out: “You lie!” when Obama said his plan would not give healthcare coverage to undocumented immigrants, earning Wilson a furious look from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Many other Republicans sat stone-faced through much of his address. The president, who has seen his approval ratings tumble and faced anger from his liberal backers during the healthcare furor, took aim at some of the most explosive charges thrown at his plan by conservative critics.

He said a claim that he wanted to set up a “death panel” to ration end of life care was “laughable ... cynical and irresponsible.”

“It’s a lie, plain and simple,” he said, drawing another standing ovation from Democratic backers, and went on to lambast claims he was bent on a government takeover of healthcare.

An election Cabinet in place

Friday, Sep 11, 2009, Page 8

The new Cabinet started work yesterday, almost one month to the day that the veneer of competence of former premier Liu Chao-shiuan’s (劉兆玄) Cabinet began to peel away in the face of the battering Taiwan suffered from Typhoon Morakot.

The reshuffle was not as comprehensive as many had hoped — with just 12 new faces among the Cabinet’s 38 members. However, nearly all those deemed to be responsible for the flawed response to Morakot — the premier, vice premier, Cabinet secretary-general, interior minister, defense minister, foreign minister and Council of Indigenous Peoples minister — are gone.

Several ministers whose performance has been anything but satisfactory, namely Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰), Environmental Protection Administration Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏), Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) and Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄), managed to hold on to their positions and must be relieved that the focus of the reshuffle was firmly fixed on culpability over Morakot.

Nevertheless, the aftermath of the disaster put the spotlight on Ma’s inability to gauge public opinion. Looking back, his failure to declare a state of emergency was a strategic error that led to a big loss of confidence in the president and his administration that it never recovered from. That, and the insensitivity shown by many top members of the former Cabinet following the flooding, made a reshuffle unavoidable.

Ma’s apparent lack of political nous was further highlighted by his reported intention to retain Liu, even in the face of the premier’s record low approval rating.

Ma came to power with promises of continuity in the Executive Yuan — his predecessor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had been criticized after going through six premiers in eight years -— but he has quickly learned that governing a country is unpredictable and that even the best laid plans go to waste.

A new Cabinet was the only way for Ma to salvage his slumping approval rating and begin to rehabilitate his image in the two years he has left before beginning his campaign for a second term.

This was the rationale behind Ma’s decision to ditch his favored tactic of installing academics and technocrats in senior positions in favor of figures with experience in local politics. Commentators have already christened the new Executive Yuan line-up an “election Cabinet” and there is no doubt Ma made these choices with one eye on 2012.

New Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and his team have their work cut out if they are to help Ma achieve his re-election goal. Together with the mammoth task of post-Morakot reconstruction, the new Cabinet’s priority will be to get the economy back on track.

Voters and the opposition will not let Ma forget his promises of a second economic miracle, but with a self-created slump in tax revenues, soaring government debt and record unemployment, those promises seem an awful long way from materializing.

If the new Cabinet cannot turn things around, and quickly, then Ma’s hopes for a second four-year term may struggle to materialize.

Media culpability
　

Friday, Sep 11, 2009, Page 8

Since May last year, local and international media have extensively covered, and celebrated, what they describe as a “growing cross-strait consensus.” President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is usually cast as a “peacemaker” and “pragmatic,” while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is described as “open to dialogue, and patient but guarded.”

Beijing’s talking point of “strained relations” during the “provocative” regime of president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is used as a comparative against which to measure the success of current policies.

The degree to which Taiwan pleases China and avoids putting the US State Department in compromising positions is considered the barometer for relations among the three. Chinese aggression and petulance are ignored or overlooked.

In their dissemination of KMT and CCP propaganda, the media omit two key elements to the story. First, cross-strait relations have been built not on a country-to-country basis, but between the KMT and the CCP, and those attendant and opportunistic corporate leaders who see fortune in the annexation of Taiwan by China. Second, the KMT and the CCP are co-managing domestic and international public relations: There’s no tension between the two, or rather, any tension is almost entirely staged and the process negotiated beforehand.

The Dalai Lama’s visit was a clear example. The KMT and the CCP agreed that Ma couldn’t risk the political fallout from banning him, but the KMT would have to ignore him. In exchange, the CCP would restrict itself to criticizing the Dalai Lama and his hosts. Everything proceeded according to plan. Cross-strait relations, which we were told were “strained” by the Dalai Lama’s visit, will now “return” to “normal.”

This is the official line and one that the media are reluctant to question. The reality is there are at least two tiers to Taiwan-China relations: official and governmental and the unofficial party-to-party relations. The former has been “partially frozen and is only incrementally amendable,” while the latter has “thawed and is rapidly growing” — so much so that the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Republic of China is being called into question.

This division between official and shadow executives threatens to bypass the president and the legislature, effectively neutralizing the Taiwanese public’s right to hold their political leaders to account and determine their foreign policy.

Former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) highlighted this danger in January when he described the implications of KMT-led cross-strait relations: “During the previous round of talks between [Chinese President] Hu [Jintao, 胡錦濤] and [KMT Chairman] Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), Wu and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) listened with satisfaction as Hu mocked Ma by saying that negotiations between the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait and the SEF [Straits Exchange Foundation] were one track in cross-strait affairs, and the KMT-CCP forums were the other.”

If the media continue to ignore the reality of cross-strait relations, then they will ultimately be as culpable as the KMT-CCP forum participants when Taiwan finally revolts against its “unofficial” sell-off behind closed doors.

BEN GOREN
Taichung

Tensions surface in PRC-India ties
　

By Sushil Seth
Friday, Sep 11, 2009, Page 8

‘The border dispute is part of a larger problem for China — that India, with its size and potential, denies China the right to become the acknowledged Asian supremo.’

Recent media reports suggest that tensions between China and India are once again on the rise on their disputed border. China claims a vast swathe of India’s northeastern state of Arunchal Pradesh as its territory.

The ongoing border talks between the two countries haven’t done much to resolve the dispute. They simply froze the border dispute to unfreeze other aspects of the relationship.However, tensions crop up now and then, reminding the world that all is not quiet on the India-China border.

As Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi recently said: “Things are getting really intense and from the Indian perspective outrageous.”

The border issue is part of a much more complex relationship.

Beijing has never taken kindly to the presence of the Dalai Lama and his entourage in India, even though New Delhi regards Tibet as part of China. At the same time, it infuriates Beijing when India is paraded so often in international talkfests as its Asian rival.

Beijing tends to be dismissive of these claims, considering China to be stronger than India. However, it can’t stop the world from projecting India as a competing Asian power.

This has been China’s problem ever since its “liberation” in 1949. India keeps popping up in some way or the other.

New Delhi’s initial role in the early 1950s to sponsor communist China into the international community was grudgingly accepted, but its credentials doubted. Its role in facilitating autonomy for Tibet in the 1950s was regarded as doing the US’ bidding, and India increasingly came to be seen as a US proxy.

China is concerned that India somehow continues to exist as a single national entity and, by virtue of its size and potential, is regarded as Beijing’s Asian rival.

Indeed, the creation of Bangladesh in the early 1970s with Indian help sent Beijing into a rage, with then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) questioning — in an interview with a British journalist — the very basis of India’s nationhood, calling it a British creation.

New China News Agency then warned India on Dec. 17, 1971, that others might do to India what it had done to Pakistan.

In other words, India too could be dismembered, apparently with Chinese help.

It was, therefore, not entirely surprising when it was reported recently that a think tank linked to the Chinese military called for India to be split into 30 independent states. It said that if China “takes a little action, the so-called great Indian federation can be broken up.”

The breaking up of India, in its view, would be in China’s interest and foster regional prosperity, it said, adding that this could be accomplished though the agency of China-friendly countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal helping “different nationalities” (in India) establish their own independent states.

Beijing is obviously rattled by India’s move to strengthen its military presence along their joint border after reports of Chinese military intrusions, describing it as “unwise military moves.”

New Delhi, on the other hand, has reiterated its joint commitment with China to “resolve outstanding issues, including the boundary question, through peaceful dialogue and consultations, and with mutual sensitivity to each other’s concerns.”

How serious is the border situation? One cannot rule out border incidents involving military clashes, as China periodically tests Indian resolve and defenses with increased military activity. At the same time, India is equally determined to hold on to its border posts and territory to deny China any territorial advantage.

These border military clashes might develop their own momentum to create a bigger crisis. But, by and large, they are likely to be a controlled affair.

However, as pointed out earlier, the border dispute is part of a larger problem for China — that India, with its size and potential, denies China the right to become the acknowledged Asian supremo.

Japan is easily dismissed these days because of its chronic economic and political malaise. Besides, whenever it tries to raise its head, Beijing whacks it down with the stick of its historical guilt, which Japan has a knack of re-visiting on itself through its insensitivity and incompetence.

India, on the other hand, tends to loom large despite all its problems. And as long as this is the case, China will find it difficult to fit India into its scheme of things.

The only way out of this predicament is to somehow slice it into different national entities. They will be more manageable like Pakistan, Bangladesh and other smaller neighbors of India.

The problem is it is easier said than done.

True, India is plagued by insurgency, including Maoist rebels, in its far-flung regions. It does stretch the Indian state and constitutes a serious problem, but India has managed it so far. Its democratic political system gives it the necessary flexibility and responsiveness to try autonomy deals of varying success, unlike China dealing with Tibet and Xinjiang.

However, if China could accentuate these contradictions in India, it would pin down New Delhi in its neighborhood and within the country. For instance, China could funnel economic and military aid to these rebel movements through Pakistan, Bangladesh and any other country inclined to play Beijing’s game.

China has done this in the past.

However, the Maoist policy of creating “revolutionary” disorder was discontinued under former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) to concentrate on China’s modernization. Any reversal of this policy to put India in place will require serious deliberations at the highest level, as they could create all kinds of unpredictable complications at a time when China is still in the process of consolidating and expanding its power.

Besides, looking at Pakistan’s parlous state, it doesn’t seem like an effective Chinese proxy against India. Bangladesh too has its own problems. At the same time, India might not be an easy pushover.

That brings us to the threat of creating 30 independent states out of India.

Obviously, it is a warning of sorts to India that Beijing can create serious trouble if New Delhi sought to be “unreasonable.” In the near term, this clash might lead to some local clashes. In the long term, China might continue to question India’s nationhood, and hope for its fragmentation into multiple nation states.

In other words, there is no hopeful scenario for stable China-India relations.

Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.