CEC revokes Diane Lee’s elected status
　

GOING TO COURT? : Lee’s lawyer said she was considering taking legal action against the ‘illegal decision’ while the KMT legislative caucus whip said the CEC was to blame
　

By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Feb 07, 2009, Page 1

The Central Election Commission (CEC) last night decided to revoke former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Diane Lee’s (李慶安) elected status both as a Taipei City councilor and as a legislator, after the US Department of State on Thursday confirmed that Lee’s US citizenship was still valid.

“The CEC believes that Diane Lee was a dual citizen between 1991 and 2005, and thus decided in a meeting today [Friday] to revoke her elected status as Taipei City councilor in 1994, and as legislator in 1999, 2002 and 2005,” CEC Secretary-General Teng Tien-yu (鄧天祐) said. “We will also void her elected certificates.”

Although Lee was re-elected as a legislator last year, Teng said the CEC could do nothing about her latest term because of changes to the nationality clause. This used to be in the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法) — hence under the CEC’s jurisdiction — but was moved to the Nationality Act (國籍法) in November 2007, so is now the responsibility of the National Immigration Agency.

Teng said the CEC decision came as a result of a vote in which eight members voted for the action while three voted against it.

“The CEC made the decision based on a letter from the US Department of State that said it had completed a probe into Lee’s dual-citizenship case, and believes that Lee did not fulfill her duty to show her intention to give up US citizenship when she first took public office in Taiwan in 1994,” Teng said.

Lee’s laywer, Lee Yung-ran (李永然), protested the CEC’s decision.

“Diane Lee was legally elected ... The CEC, as an institution in the executive branch, has no right to revoke that election,” Lee Yung-ran said. “If the CEC thinks there’s a problem, they should take it to the courts and let the judiciary decide.”

Lee Yung-ran added that Diane Lee was considering legal action against the CEC’s “illegal decision.”

KMT-recommended commission member Liu Kuang-hua (劉光華) and People First Party-recommended commission member Chao Shu-chien (趙叔鍵) supported Lee Yung-ran’s view that it should be a court, not the commission, that makes the final decision.

The dual-citizenship allegation against Diane Lee first surfaced last March. At the time, she argued that by taking an oath as a public official when she was first elected as Taipei City councilor in 1994 she lost her US citizenship.

Diane Lee promised in December that she would provide a legal document proving that she longer had US citizenship by the end of last month. However, she resigned as a legislator on Jan. 8 and failed to show any document supporting her claim by Jan. 31.

Although her election was revoked, Teng said the CEC cannot require her to return the NT$100 million (US$3 million) she received in salary as a city councilor and lawmaker, as “it’s the city council and the Legislative Yuan that have the power to do so.”

“The revocation would not affect any legislative ... power Diane Lee has exercised during her terms in office because her election was ‘revoked’ not ‘invalidated’ — meaning that she exercised power legitimately when she was in office,” Teng said.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) yesterday urged KMT legislators and KMT Taipei city councilors to recover the salary Lee earned from 1991 to 2005.

DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said the CEC’s decision showed the KMT-dominated legislature’s refusal to relieve Lee of her status as a legislator was wrong.

KMT caucus whip Chang Shuo-wen (張碩文) said the CEC was responsible for the controversy.

“The CEC is a government institution that reviews if someone is qualified to become a candidate,” Cheng said. “So this whole mess .... was because the CEC wasn’t careful in reviewing a candidate’s qualifications.”
　

Chinese drought emergency status raised to top level
　

CRISIS:: China’s water resources are becoming rapidly depleted, with Beijing and its population of 17 million people being particularly badly affected

AFP,AND BLOOMBERG, BEIJING
Saturday, Feb 07, 2009, Page 1
　

A young Chinese girl plays on a dry riverbed on Thursday in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. A severe drought in northern China has hit almost 43 percent of the country’s wheat crop this winter, senior officials said. PHOTO: AFP

China was struggling yesterday to get water to millions of people and save swathes of its wheat harvest, after raising its drought emergency status to the highest level for the first time.

The decision to go to emergency level one was taken on Thursday at a meeting of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, Xinhua news agency reported.

Eight provinces and municipalities are affected, stretching in a broad belt from Gansu on the Mongolian border in the northwest to Shandong on the Yellow Sea in the east.

About 43 percent of the country’s winter wheat supplies are at risk, as some areas have seen no rain for 100 days or more, state media said.

The increased alert level was made official at the same time as the central government sent out specialists to the major drought-hit regions to help residents with relief supplies and technical aid, the China Daily said.

About 4.3 million people and 2.1 million head of livestock are short of water, the relief headquarters said in a statement, as parts of the nation experience their worst drought since the early 1950s.

Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu (�?}) held a state conference on Thursday to coordinate and strengthen efforts to help the affected regions, calling for quick financial and material support, the China Daily reported.

Hui also urged local governments to speed up the construction of irrigation systems for crops, the paper said, although it was unclear if this could be done fast enough to help alleviate the current crisis.

The dry spell highlights one of China’s main long-term worries, as water resources are becoming rapidly depleted due to fast economic growth.

Beijing, is particularly badly hit, with experts warning the city, home to 17 million people, will soon have reached the limit beyond which there will not be enough water to go around.

Last September authorities were forced into a six-month emergency diversion scheme that is seeing water being pumped from neighboring Hebei Province to Beijing.

The water flows along a 305km canal stretching from the Hebei capital of Shijiazhuang to Beijing and fed by three major reservoirs.

The canal is part of China’s ambitious North-South Water Diversion Project, a multi-billion dollar scheme to bring water from the nation’s longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north.

Shaanxi Province, among the areas hardest hit by the drought, will try to induce rain or snowfall to relieve parched soil.

The province will time the effort to coincide with when a weak cold front from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region meets a warm stream from the southwest, the China Meteorological Administration said on its Web site yesterday. Local agencies will use rockets, cannon and aircraft to fire chemicals into the sky to seed the clouds and increase rainfall.

About 210 rockets and 400 cannons are in place, the report said. Airplanes will be deployed for man-made rains from late this month to next month, it said.

Ten excuses for Diane Lee

Dear Johnny,

I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or punch out the walls when I read about the histrionics that is the case of former legislator Diane Lee (李慶安). I sometimes feel like doing all three at the same time.

I suppose the best response to such absurdity is humor — and scorn. So, with apologies to David Letterman, I am offering the Top Ten Reasons Why Diane Lee Failed To Share Documentation On Her Case Even Though She Publicly Vowed To Do So.

No. 10: Senior caudillos in the KMT told Lee that she did not have to share or divulge anything. They said: “Diane, we practically control the whole fucking country now — its presidency, its legislature, its judiciary, its industries and most of its media. We’re well on our way to being a one-party state, just like in the old days. And you’re one of us, Diane. So you don’t have to worry about your alleged trifling peccadillos such as fraud and misappropriation of funds. After all, they don’t call us the ‘black gold’ party for nothing. Wink, wink. And if any of those ignorant, betel-nut chewing peasants dare get uppity in the least bit, we’ll throw their asses in stir and beat the hell out of them.”

No. 9: The Boys in Beijing told Lee that she did not have to do anything she did not want to do, that their troops were just itching to carry out another massacre and that their soldiers would “take care” of anything that was left unfinished by the KMT.

No. 8: Former US president George W. Bush told Lee that God told him she would be granted special exemption even if she reneged on her vow. As God says, no one below Him is perfect. God also said that Bush makes Lee seem like a choir girl.

No. 7: Lee’s lawyer told her that she did not have to share any documentation with the public because she was no longer a legislator. This is the single greatest piece of legal counsel ever offered in at least four centuries. This lawyer is manifestly the greatest legal mind living in Taiwan. Move over, Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren.

No. 6: While visiting Taipei Zoo to view Tuan-tuan and Yuan-yuan, one of those little fuckers stuck their paws into Lee’s purse, snatching away the original and only copy of a letter from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) that explained everything. Then they proceeded to eat the letter, depriving Lee of the chance to exonerate herself.

No. 5: Much to her horror and distress, Lee discovered that the letter supposedly sent by the AIT had been faked and that the signature on it was a forgery. After discovering this dastardly deed, Lee claimed that she had “some ideas” as to who could be responsible and promised a thorough investigation.

No. 4: Lee claimed to have been abducted by aliens from the planet Zxanthocan. She claimed that once on board their spacecraft, she was forced to undergo an excessively intimate body search. Upon being brought back to Earth, Lee was admitted to hospital, where she is recovering from the harrowing procedure. The letter disappeared and is presumably still on the alien craft somewhere in the quadrant Thartan.

No. 3: While on banking business somewhere in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, Lee ran into Bernie Madoff, who told her that the letter in her possession would some day be of great historical value and worth a lot of money. Much to her chagrin, Madoff convinced Lee to give the letter to him as down payment on a “sure fire” and very lucrative investment.

No. 2: That was not really Diane Lee who made the vow in early January. A special unit from CSI Taipei has determined that it was either Lee’s clone or the evil twin, mini-Lee who made the promise. The CSI Taipei team further uncovered the shocking truth that the real Diane Lee had smuggled herself out of Taiwan in a freight container loaded with Chinese tainted milk powder.

No. 1: Lee entered into a mystic trance and altered state of conscious. Once in this mode, she was able to access the Jungian Collective Unconscious where she was able to communicate with two of her fellow Americans — former president George Washington and the character Joe Isuzu from the car commercials of the 1980s. The two gave Lee mutually conflicting advice. George said to Lee: “I could not tell a lie; and neither should you, Diane.” But Joe gave her the opposite advice. He recommended that she become a pathological liar just like him, and that her entire existence should become a shameful web of lies and deceit, like the character Emma in Madame Bovary. The big question is: Just whose advice did she take?

Michael Scanlon
East Hartford, Connecticut

Johnny replies: I take it, Michael, that your dislike of Ms Lee goes beyond her abandoning you at the altar?