DPP contenders debate on party direction, policy
　

By Shih Hsiu-chuan and Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTERS
Sunday, May 11, 2008, Page 1
　

The three contenders for the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) top post sparred over the issues of the party’s future direction, cross-strait relations and regaining public trust in a televised debate yesterday.

While DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮),73, and former presidential senior adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), 82, emphasized the party’s roles in advocating Taiwanese independence, former vice premier Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), 52, highlighted the importance of expanding the party’s support base.

The 22-year-old party’s eight-year rule as a governing party is coming to an end on May 20, when it hands over the power to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

The DPP came to power in 2000, marking the country’s first power transfer and ending more than 50 years of KMT rule. The DPP won another four years in office with its victory in the 2004 presidential election, winning a record-high 50.11 percent of the vote.

However, the party started experiencing setbacks in 2005. It suffered defeat in local government elections, the Taipei city mayoral and city councilor elections in 2006, the legislative election earlier this year — in which it secured only a handful of seats — and the bruising defeat in the presidential election this March.

An old man like me has already come forward, can young people bear to abandon the DPP?

Koo Kwang-ming, candidate for DPP chairman
The party’s image has also been tarnished by a series of scandals involving members of the first family and several government officials. Political observers say that the political gridlock, a lackluster economy and the cross-strait stalemate all contributed to tarnishing the party’s public image.

We put ourselves in other people’s shoes and explain our ideas to them in their language.

Tsai Ing-wen, candidate for the DPP chairmanship
The debate, the only one before the chairmanship election next Sunday, was held in Kaohsiung City and was televised nationwide by Formosa TV.

Koo and Chai spoke mostly in Hoklo during the debate, while Tsai spoke in Mandarin most of the time.

Tsai said the DPP should have more interaction with the middle-class, women and young groups “to lure them to work with us.”

Tsai said that one reason some DPP officials got caught up in corruption allegations was that they fell victim to the rotten system of government that the DPP inherited from the KMT’s long-term rule.

The system will get worse after the KMT returns to power, she added.

Koo, the oldest candidate of the three, tried to turn his age from a liability into an asset.

“An old man like me has already come forward, can young people bear to abandon the DPP?” Koo asked.

Koo said he felt grief when the KMT won the legislative election in January and the presidential election in March, as it seemed to be a public repudiation of Taiwanese independence that he had advocated for so many decades.



Chai urged party members to vote for him as he is experienced and can mobilize support to protest against the KMT administration if president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the legislature were to pass a cross-strait peace agreement as Ma had promised during his presidential campaign.

The peace agreement would rule out the option for Taiwanese to pursue independence and prohibit Taiwan from purchasing weapons for self-defense, Chai said.

“Ma had said that the peace agreement is subject to legislative approval only and does not need public support. If he were to make such a move, the DPP needs a chairman who can lead a mass demonstration,” Chai said

In a question-and-answer session, the three candidates elaborated on their ideas on the new challenges that the DPP was facing, including China’s rise, an absolute KMT majority and a China-friendly KMT government. They also discussed how the DPP could broaden its support to win in the next presidential election.

Chai said he wasn’t concerned about the KMT majority in the legislature.

“We don’t have many legislators — only 27, but it’s much more than the number of people we had in the legislature 20 years ago,” he said. “So these 27 comrades should work hard to keep tabs on the KMT.”

He said the DPP should focus more on defending Taiwan’s sovereignty and work with all anti-KMT groups and individuals.

“I’m very experienced in the struggle against the KMT,” he said. “Before we won [in 2000], I used to collaborate with many groups to organize demonstrations against the KMT government — one time, we had more than 200,000 participants and I was the chief convener of the demonstration.”

“What’s more important is that we should insist on safeguarding Taiwan’s sovereignty and independence — it’s the DPP’s core value, it’s the DPP’s soul. The party will collapse if we don’t persevere,” Chai said.

Koo agreed.

“I have some figures here that show 89.3 percent of the people think that Taiwan and China are separate countries, and that 81 percent of the people are against unification [with China],” Koo told the audience. “Although the KMT — with unification as its ultimate goal — now has the power, its political ideology is different from what most people believe in, and therefore I don’t think they will be in power for long.”

Koo went on to say that the DPP had lost power not because of its stance on Taiwan’s sovereignty, but rather because DPP politicians had failed to stick to this ideology.

Tsai also said she believed the nation’s sovereignty could not be sacrificed in exchange for closer cross-strait ties.

“During my term as chairperson of the Mainland Affairs Council, I never made any concessions on Taiwan’s sovereignty, and yet, direct ferry lines [between Kinmen, Matsu and China], and direct cross-strait holiday charter flights were successfully launched during my term,” she said.

She also stressed that any changes to the nation’s status quo must be decided by a referendum.

“That’s the bottom line, and we cannot back down,” she said.

However, instead of focusing solely on defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, she said the DPP should also be more open to broadening its support.

“Taiwan is a migrant society, different groups of people moved to this island at different times, and they have different ideas and emotional ties to China,” Tsai said. “We should therefore find a common ground that is acceptable to everyone.”

“We put ourselves in other people’s shoes and explain our ideas to them in their language,” she said.

The three were also asked about the country’s economic performance under the DPP government.

All three said that the economy under the DPP was not as bad as the media had portrayed.

“I don’t only think that the economy isn’t bad, I actually think it’s quite good,” Koo said. “But there are pro-blue media outlets that keep reporting otherwise — it’s quite irresponsible.”

Koo and Tsai also emphasized the need for better government communication with the public to present a clearer image of what the administration had achieved.

In conclusion, Tsai said she would work to build a DPP as a grassroots, transparent, efficient, tolerant, diverse and united party.

Chai said that the DPP should stand firm on keeping Taiwan sovereign and independent, while adding that the party should solidify its grassroots organizations.

Koo said he would work to stabilize the party and to strengthen the connection between the party and its supporters.

On ending ‘checkbook diplomacy’
　

By C.V. Chen 陳長文
Sunday, May 11, 2008, Page 8

The commotion over the Papua New Guinea diplomatic fund scandal has been increasing in intensity. Yet I feel that if it were not for the structural weaknesses present in Taiwan’s diplomatic relations, it would be difficult for politicians, greedy officials, corrupt businessmen and middlemen to cheat the public and steal from the nation’s coffers.

Any corruption or dereliction of duty in this particular case should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent. However, it is even more important to face up to these structural weaknesses. How should we do so? Allow me to address this matter using two recent news stories.

The first: More than 60,000 deaths resulted from the cyclone in Myanmar, and the victims are still awaiting international aid. The second: In a television interview, premier-designate Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said that it would not be easy to completely eliminate “checkbook diplomacy,” and that it would be too idealistic to do so.

How does one define “checkbook diplomacy,” I wonder? Which definition was Liu using when he said that talk of eliminating it was too idealistic?

The first possibility is “checkbook diplomacy” means that when Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, causing tens of thousands of deaths and wreaking havoc on hundreds of thousands of other Burmese, Taiwan without hesitation established a US$30 million relief fund and threw itself into humanitarian efforts for that country, which maintains no diplomatic relations with Taipei.

In this is what is meant by “checkbook diplomacy,” then I think there is an indisputable need for it. If Taiwan spent US$30 million on a diplomatic (or non-diplomatic) ally to build hospitals for disadvantaged people, send an agricultural team to help impoverished rural areas, provide educational development assistance to less developed nations or sponsor poor children, than I entirely agree with the argument that eliminating checkbook diplomacy is too idealistic.

The second possibility is that “checkbook diplomacy” refers to Taiwan giving money, without knowledge of how it will be used, to foreign politicians in exchange for diplomatic relations.

We should condemn any official who, for the sake of visible political accomplishment, still advocates these kinds of exchanges as necessary.

In 2004 I wrote an article about abandoning the myth of the importance of the number of diplomatic allies and seeking to fight the right diplomatic battles. As a result of this article, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a seminar on this topic. My views on the matter have not changed to this day.

The 23 diplomatic allies that we have do not even make up 13 percent of the countries of the world. If you look at their combined population, they hardly reach 1.5 percent of the world’s population. If you look at their total area, it is only 1.2 percent of the world’s total.

It is not hard to see from these numbers how incredibly silly it is that US$30 million was spent to buy diplomatic relations with Papua New Guinea, only to have it stolen by a middleman. Besides, when Taiwan gains or loses a diplomatic ally, people just think: “So what?”

When we spend a fortune in an attempt to add another “diplomatic ally” to the list, government officials should ask themselves whether there is any meaning in having these “allies.”

Once these countries go through changes in political power, we have no guarantee that the incoming leader will be friendlier than the incumbent whose favors we have bought. Does that mean we have to make “another purchase”?

Also, most cases of money-based “diplomatic shopping” involve under-the-table political donations. Not only does this violate the target country’s laws, it is also extremely unethical.

I believe that if the US$30 million that disappeared as part of the Papua New Guinea scandal were given to premier-designate Liu or foreign affairs minister-designate Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊), they would use it for the first kind of checkbook diplomacy described above.

This is quite consistent with president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) remarks at a Taiwan Fund for Children and Families event, where he said that Taiwan is ranked fifth in the world according to the number of needy children it sponsors, and that this is the best way for it to display its strength on the international stage.

Although Taiwan’s finances are in difficult straits, we continue to engage in this kind of self-emaciating, yet disgraceful diplomatic policy, all for meaningless numbers of diplomatic allies.

It would be better to employ a transparent method to work with local non-governmental organizations to expend diplomatic resources on charitable works in less developed nations.

Only in this way will Taiwan gain respect internationally as well as engage in meaningful diplomacy.

C.V. Chen is the president of The Red Cross Society, ROC.