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Ma’s ad hoc meetings a clear breach of
the law
By James Wang 王景弘
Saturday, Apr 10, 2010, Page 8
In the US, National Security Council meetings are serious affairs. Each one is
allotted an official number and involves discussion of a set agenda with
recommendations made, conclusions arrived at and confidential minutes taken.
These meetings are forums for discussing issues of national importance and are
never held when the president is out of the country or when only two or three
members can attend. In addition, members of Congress are never allowed to sit
in.
Take, for example, the 823 Military Bombardment of Quemoy (now Kinmen), also
known as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, that broke out on Aug. 23, 1958. Two
days later, and again on the 29th of that month, then-US president Dwight
Eisenhower called together the acting secretaries of state and defense, the
director of the CIA, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of
Naval Operations in a meeting known to history as the “Meeting at the White
House on the Taiwan Strait Situation.”
Taiwan’s Organic Act of the National Security Council (國家安全會議組織法) defines the
National Security Council (NSC) as an institution that exists to advise the
president on major national security policy.
It is to consist of a total of 12 members, these being the vice president; the
premier and vice premier; the Ministers of the Interior, Foreign Affairs,
National Defense, Economic Affairs and Finance; the Chairperson of the Mainland
Affairs Council; the Chief of Staff; and the secretaries-general of the NSC and
the National Security Bureau (NSB).
When asked by the press, while he was on his trip to Palau, for his reaction to
the news that a South Korean navy vessel had sank near North Korean waters,
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seemed to be none the wiser, and had to ask
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) and NSC Secretary-General Hu
Wei-jen (胡為真), who were in his entourage, to “seek confirmation” of the facts
from Taipei.
He described this meeting with the two men as an “ad hoc National Security
Council meeting,” adding that he called three meetings in the 15 hours after
being informed of the incident to “keep up with developments and decide how to
proceed.”
The fact that the NSC meeting was attended by only two of the possible 12
members clearly violated the law. Ma referring to the meeting as an “ad hoc NSC
meeting” was strange enough, but his choice of participants in “seeking
confirmation” was equally problematic, as Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng
(王金平) sat in on the conference call with the three official NSC members, Vice
President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Minister of National
Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱), whilst the NSB chairman was conspicuous by his
absence.
It seems that Ma does not fully comprehend the importance of these NSC meetings,
the facts of which it fell to Kao to clarify, since neither Siew, Wu, or Wang
felt able to talk to reporters “seeking confirmation.”
According to Kao, “the ad hoc meeting that the president called was a meeting
about a national security issue”; it “was not actually a statutory, formal
National Security Council meeting per se, and neither did it constitute an
activation of the national security mechanism on this occasion.”
When it comes to fluff and bluff, Ma clearly has the lead on Kao; when it comes
to being up-front, doing things according to the law and not mincing his words,
Ma is way behind Kao. Can this government even do anything right?
James Wang is a journalist based in Washington.
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