Chen to invite Ma to observe military drill next month

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008, Page 2

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will invite president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to observe a computerized military drill next month as part of his bid to ensure a smooth transition of power, an official at the Presidential Office said on Sunday.

Chen instructed the National Security Council (NSC) ahead of the presidential election to invite the winner to attend the military drill, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Chen also offered his congratulations immediately after Ma won Saturday's poll and vowed to maintain political stability, the official said.

Chen, whose second four-year term will end on May 20, has seen institutionalizing the transfer of power as a major democratic engineering task that needed to be achieved during his term in office, the official said.

Taiwan's first transfer of power -- from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) -- occurred in 2000.

The official, a former NSC employee, said that in 2000, intelligence, military, diplomatic and cross-strait officials did not know whether they should brief Chen because it was the first time in the nation's history that the KMT had lost power after 50 years of rule.

Chen eventually received the briefings after an order from then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), the official said.

Lee also set up a special task force for the peaceful transfer of power after Chen was elected, the official said.

To institutionalize the transition, Chen quickly pushed for political neutrality and loyalty to the country rather than a party within the military and intelligence agencies, the official said.

Chen has also said on numerous occasions that as long as the military is stable, the entire country will be stable, the official said.

Extent of DPP election loss surprises many
　

CHARISMA: A professor of sociology pointed to Ma Ying-jeou's popularity as the reason why people are willing to overlook his shortcomings as a public servant
By Ko Shu-ling

STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008, Page 3

　

While opinion polls predicted a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) loss in Saturday's presidential election, the extent of its defeat came as a surprise to some, especially in the south, traditionally considered a DPP stronghold.

Speaking on the loss of support in the south, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said that although DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) performed well as the city's mayor, it may have been regarded as irrelevant and the party might not have packaged Hsieh's achievements very well.

Hsieh garnered over 48 percent of the votes in Kaohsiung City, while his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rival Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) gathered nearly 52 percent.

The DPP ticket won in only five counties: Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung.

Despite Ma's not-so-memorable achievements during his stint as Taipei mayor, analysts said Ma's good looks and charisma made him immune to criticism.

In fact, since taking office in December 1998, not a single opinion poll -- including those conducted by private groups as well as the city government -- has ever put Ma in a negative light.

In Saturday's election, Ma collected a record high number of votes since the first direct presidential election in 1996. Ma secured 58.45 percent of the ballots, or over 7.5 million, with the DPP ticket garnering 41.55 percent, or about 5.4 million.

At an election-eve rally in Taipei City, Hsieh could not help but complain that the public has adopted a "double standard" where Ma is concerned.

"I wonder whether the public would forgive President Chen [Shui-bian (陳水扁)] if he were embroiled in a green card controversy like Ma," he said to the crowd.

Hsieh has accused Ma of holding a US green card since 1977, while Ma has said his green card was automatically invalidated in 1985 when he applied for a visa to travel to the US.

Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), a professor of sociology at National Chengchi University and an executive member of the Taipei Society, pointed to Ma's overwhelming popularity as the reason why many people are willing to overlook his shortcomings as a public servant.

"We call it the charisma phenomenon -- a form of idolatry," he said.

Political analyst Antonio Chiang (江春男), a former Taipei Times editor-in-chief, agreed, saying that although Hsieh was more capable, eloquent and smarter than Ma, most Taiwanese tend to identify more with someone who is less articulate and more simple.

"It was Ma's success, not the KMT's," he said. "It was President Chen who defeated the DPP. It was an impossible task under the circumstances no matter how hard Hsieh tried."

In addition to personal charisma, Chiang said Ma successfully created the image that he was connected with Taiwan, an issue his predecessors avoided.

"No matter how true his intention was, he deserves some credit for moving away from China and toward Taiwan," Chiang said.

"It was meaningful to have the first [democratically elected] China-born president in Taiwan," he said.

Since the loss on Saturday, party heavyweights have been keeping a low profile, but most agree that the DPP must take a good look at itself and finger-pointing is rife.

Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) was the first to criticize Hsieh, saying that he had distanced himself from President Chen, making her and the president unable to help in the campaign as much as they had hoped.

Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chih-hung (曹啟鴻), however, blamed President Chen for being "reckless" and "straightforward" in his words, therefore causing much harm to the party.

Some targeted former secretary-general of the Ministry of Education Chuang Kuo-rong (莊國榮) for his derogatory remarks about Ma's late father as well as Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝), who had apologized for Chuang's conduct.

Tsai Chia-hung (蔡佳泓), an associate research fellow at National Chengchi University's Election Study Center, said that it was a myth that the south has traditionally been the stronghold of the DPP, at least not in the 2000 presidential election.

Statistics showed that except for Tainan County, the KMT ticket of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and the independent ticket of James Soong (宋楚瑜) and Chang Chao-hsiung (張昭雄) together garnered more votes in Kaohsiung County, Kaohsiung City, Tainan City and Pingtung County than thee DPP ticket.

In the 2004 presidential election, the ratio between DPP and KMT tickets in the south changed from 4 to 5 to 5 to 4 and in Tainan County from 4 to 5 to 6 to 3.

One of the reasons that the south is growing more DPP friendly is that residents there are worse-off than their northern counterparts so they depend more on government subsidies and therefore tend to support those who give them , Tsai said.

Tsai said Saturday's election also proved that the identity card was simply not enough to win this year's election.

The KMT not only tackled the identity issue head on but also focused on improving the economy, stoking public dissatisfaction with the current administration's economic policy, he said.

Compounding the problem was the negative coverage by some KMT-friendly media outlets, Tsai said. It drove away younger voters who consume such media.

Bureau acts to safeguard butterflies
　

BOOST: The Taiwan Area Freeway Bureau has stepped up measures to protect migrating butterflies after efforts last year proved ineffective
　

By Shelley Shan
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008, Page 4
　

As large numbers of milkweed butterflies migrate from the south of Taiwan to the north at this time of year, the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau has taken several measures to protect the indigenous species.

Bureau Director-General Lee Tai-ming (李泰明) said yesterday that the majority of the butterflies were expected to fly across the Linnei (林內) section of the Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3) in Yunlin County between 9am and 12pm from tomorrow until next Saturday.

He said the bureau would close the northbound section between the 251km and 253km markers on the Formosa Freeway -- 2km in length -- when the number of butterflies reaches 500 per minute, adding that the measure would be executed within two hours of the instruction being given.

Meanwhile, a stretch of safety net -- 4m in height and 400m in length -- has been installed on the right side of the road near the same location so that the butterflies are forced to fly above the traffic flow.

The bureau has also grown a total of 500 trees west of the Chinshui River (清水溪) in Nantou County to act as "natural safety net" for the butterflies.

Four hundred sets of florescent lamps have been installed under the overpass to guide the passage of the butterflies.

At the Tai-an Service Area (泰安休息站) of the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No.1) and the Baihe Service Area (白河休息站) of the Formosa Freeway, the bureau has grown a large quantity of host plants and nectar plants as food for the butterflies.

The bureau's estimates show the measures cost approximately NT$2.5 million (US$83,000).

The bureau started taking proactive action to protect the milkweed butterflies last year.

However, the ultraviolet light the bureau used to try to lure the butterflies to fly underneath the elevated road proved to be ineffective. Also, the safety net last year was only 90m in length and 3.5m in height and the northbound lane was only closed when butterfly numbers topped 2,000 per minute.

Jhan Jia-long (詹家龍), a researcher at the Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan, said overall the measures taken last year had helped lower the mortality rate of the milkweed butterflies between 1 percent and 10 percent.

Jhan also said based on statistics collected between March 13 and Saturday, the mortality rate could potentially drop further to 0.01 percent.

"The focus this year is to experiment with ways to increase the number of butterflies flying underneath the elevated road," he said.

Congratulations -- we'll be watching

Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008, Page 8

For all its vaunted intrinsic value, democracy means that its outcomes cannot please everybody. Such was the case on Saturday, when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won by a comfortable margin, leaving 41.55 percent -- or 5.4 million -- of those who voted for the Democratic Progressive Party shaking their heads and wondering what will happen to their country.

But the end of the world is not upon us. Unlike what the more alarmist among us have argued, a KMT "return" to power is not coterminous with "death of democracy," nor does it mean that Taiwan is half a strait closer to being swallowed by China.

There are two principal reasons for this.

First, except for a small minority, the 7.6 million people who voted for Ma did so as Taiwanese and chose the KMT because they believed his campaign promises to improve the economy and defuse tensions with China. Those votes were cast with the hope that a KMT win would benefit them and Taiwan -- no one else. Voting is not an act of selflessness; when Americans vote for a candidate, they are not voting to, say, please Canada or Mexico. They think of themselves, their jobs, security and the future of their children. Taiwan is no different. While the outcome may please Beijing, Taiwanese did not vote to make China happy.

Second, those on the losing side of the aisle have not disappeared and their voices haven't suddenly been silenced. Despite Ma's big win, he and the members of his government will need to heed the fact that more than 5.4 million Taiwanese did not vote for them. If they ever forget that, they'll be in serious trouble, perhaps even earlier than four years from now.

Not for many years will the voice of the people have been as important as it will be when Ma assumes the presidency on May 20. Now that the legislative and the executive branches are under KMT control, the onus will be on them to deliver on the promises of accountable leadership they made during the campaign.

The KMT victory does not mean, as some have suggested, that the devil incarnate will step into office. In fact, in the past months Ma has increasingly sounded like a leader for Taiwanese and his party has some good people in it who can be counted on to put the interest of the nation first. These people must be encouraged.

Simultaneously, as Ma steps onto the international scene, he must be brought back into line if he is ever seen to be departing from his promises to serve the interests of Taiwan, and every effort must be made to ensure that the rotten elements in the KMT -- who are easily identifiable -- do not manipulate their victory to serve interests other than those of Taiwan.

Saturday's result was not a return to the authoritarian era, because democracy is now part of the nation's fabric -- and Ma must learn to navigate that environment. But democracy implies work. Hard work. And it imposes responsibilities that go far beyond showing up at the voting station on election day.

Ma won, so let's give him a chance to prove himself. But we'll be watching -- all of us.

KMT must turn promises into reality
　

By Liao Kun-jung 廖坤榮
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008, Page 8

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won a decisive victory with nearly 60 percent of the vote in the presidential election on Saturday. In political economist Kenneth Arrow's terms, the election results can be described as Taiwan's "social choice" as well as a rational choice based on the public's collective political preferences. However, whether it is a social or a rational choice, it is inevitable that people will associate Ma's resounding victory with the KMT's crushing defeat of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the January legislative elections.

We all know how, after the KMT won the January poll, the phrase "one-party dominance" has become almost a curse on the party. In fact, according to the Constitution, the legislature is an elected organization representing public opinion while the president is the chief executive and is directly elected by the general public. Hence, regardless of the election outcome, it is an expression of the public's collective rationality.

When the DPP said that they wanted to use the executive branch as a check on the legislative branch before Saturday's poll, did they really mean that the public should use their vote to elect an executive to monitor the institution they had elected to monitor the government?

This year's elections have shown that after eight years of social division and economic downturn, Taiwan is eager for change and has decided to let the KMT take full responsibility for both the executive and the legislative branches.

The election of a unified government is also the political norm in many countries. For example, between 1946 and 2004, the US had a divided government for 36 years and a unified government for 22 years. US voters do not worry that the executive and legislative branches are controlled by one party; instead, they worry that the division of the executive and legislative branches between two different parties could be a source of conflict.

Besides, one-party rule doesn't guarantee that there will not be a transfer of political power. Both in the US and France, transition of political power is a natural democratic choice and a normal expression of democratic political preferences.

As the nation's democracy matures, we should learn to calmly face and accept the outcome of each election and believe that we have the same political wisdom as voters in France and the US.

Taiwan is about to enter an era of unified government. This means that Taiwanese voters are hoping for a capable and efficient government.

In the past, the public made a "social choice" to let the DPP rule the country to pull itself out of the KMT's dominance, resulting in divided government for the first time. However, more than eight years of treading water politically, the DPP has been devoted to such ideological issues as removing the Chinese inscription on the gate to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall square and removing Chinese symbolism from Taiwan, while muddling important public policies on the economy, social security, education, natural resources and employment on the pretext that the legislature was dominated by the opposition.

This ignorance of the sufferings of the public has not only led to few political achievements but also accumulated a great deal of public complaints. Therefore, voters would rather put the KMT back in power with the expectation that it will transform itself into a capable and responsible political party.

The presidential election is over. The KMT must take responsibility for the nation and take advantage of running the government for the next four years.

Besides pondering on how to put its promises into practice and how to map out and implement public policies, most importantly, the KMT must find honest, upright and capable people to form a team with integrity that can avoid the errors of the past eight years. Only then can the KMT break through the ideological "one China" and ethnic barriers.

The DPP, on the other hand, should review why it strayed so far from the public's will and engage in soul searching to get ready for the next election.

Both parties have come to realize that the beauty of party politics lies in the fact that parties can not stay in power forever, nor in the opposition forever, and that the only thing that is forever is public opinion.

Liao Kun-jung is a professor of political science at National Chung Cheng University.

US, Japan show their concern for the Strait
　

By Cheng Ta-chen 鄭大誠
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008, Page 8

`The US and Japan have demonstrated once again that the Taiwan Strait is an important area for them.'

Before Saturday's presidential election, the US dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait area. The USS Nimitz came with its entire carrier battle group, including submarines, while the other aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, brought a guided missile destroyer.

A few days earlier, Nobushige Takamizawa, head of the Bureau of Defense Policy at the Japanese Ministry of Defense, stated that it would affect Japan's national security if something were to happen in the Taiwan Strait, which Japan sees as lying in its "surrounding area."

It was clear that the US and Japan were very concerned that the election could cause unrest in Taiwan, and also that Beijing might use such unrest to its own advantage.

It is unknown whether these actions by the US and Japan were in reaction to concrete intelligence, but there is no doubt that the US flexing its military power can deter China. The US and Japan have demonstrated once again that the Taiwan Strait is an important area for them and that they both benefit from stability in the area.

Within Taiwan, this may have been overlooked in the excitement that came with the election, but the moves by the US and Japan may have had quite an impact in China.

Although both the US and Japan thought that neither of the two referendums on applying for UN membership would pass in Saturday's elections, they were still worried that the referendums could be a source of tension in the Strait. Japan and the US had to tread carefully, as China could have interpreted the referendums as a "major incident entailing Taiwan's secession from China" according to Article 8 of its "Anti-Secession" Law, which could prompt Beijing to resort to "non-peaceful means" in dealing with Taiwan.

Some people think that the US military's posturing in the Strait will be a counterweight that will force the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to focus less on protesters in Tibet, but at the moment China is well capable of fighting "1.5" wars on two different fronts.

If it started a large-scale war against Taiwan, it could still keep up a war on a smaller scale in Xinjiang or Tibet. The PLA's 13th and 14th armies have received special training and are capable of handling the eruptive situations in Tibet and elsewhere. The PLA has even established rapid reaction forces within these two armies.

If China wants to use military means to suppress Tibet, it doesn't need to use its forces stationed along the east and south coast to do so. Similarly, Taiwan should not hope that unrest in other areas of China would in any way diminish the danger in the Taiwan Strait.

It is highly significant that, just as during the 1996 presidential election, the US dispatched two aircraft carriers to the vicinity of Taiwan. This shows the strategic importance of the Strait to the US and Japan, perhaps even more clearly than the February 2005 meeting of their joint Security Consultancy Committee. But Taiwan will still have to take care of itself and it cannot use this as a reason to lower its guard.

Cheng Ta-chen is an independent defense analyst.