US group pressures Ma on TFD shuffle
　

COMPROMISED: In a letter to Ma Ying-jeou, the National Endowment for Democracy said it had concerns over the independence of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy
　

By William Lowther
STAFF REPORTER , WASHINGTON
Sunday, Jun 21, 2009, Page 1

Carl Gershman, president of the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has written to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), calling on him not to interfere with the structure and policies of the highly respected Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD).

It has been widely reported that the Ma administration intends to make major changes to the foundation’s governing board and to stop it from offering financial support to pro-democracy movements in China, Tibet and Cuba.

Sources in Taipei said the impending moves were triggered by complaints from Beijing at a time when Ma is making numerous concessions to improve cross-strait relations.

Gershman’s letter, sent last week, said: “It has come to my attention through reports in the press that broad changes are being proposed for the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. I am concerned that such an overhaul could well compromise both the Foundation’s independence and the quality of its work.”

While the NED may be the only organization to quickly react this strongly, a number of Washington-based groups — including Freedom House and the Formosan Association for Public Affairs — are known to be deeply concerned about reports of Ma’s alleged plans to interfere with and restrict the TFD.

Several members of US Congress are also worried about the situation, but have decided to wait until Ma officially makes his plans known before reacting.

Gershman said the TFD had enjoyed a close relationship with the 25-year-old NED since the TFD was founded in 2003.

He said in the letter that the TFD had “burnished” Taiwan’s reputation as a democracy.

“The TFD has been able to fulfill its promise over the last six years because of two attributes that have also contributed to the NED’s success,” Gershman said.

“The first is its independence and arms-length relationship to the government that have enabled it to carry out its mission free of political interference or control; and the second is a commitment to bipartisanship in its governance, so that no matter which party is in government, the operations and basic direction of the Foundation will remain constant,” he said.

The high quality of TFD’s work, Gershman said, has brought democrats throughout Asia together in a network and has had a strong regional impact, enabling Taiwan’s voice to be heard in key international forums.

“I am concerned that a major overhaul of the Foundation’s leadership would have serious consequences in terms of the continuity of work currently underway. But I am even more troubled by the negative message it would send to those who have regarded the Foundation as an expression not of one particular partisan point of view but rather as an expression of the commitment of the people of Taiwan to democratic solidarity,” he said.

“We hope that our fears are unfounded and that the Foundation will continue on a steady path. I believe this would greatly benefit Taiwan and would also serve the cause of democracy worldwide,” he said.

Former US official warns about ECFA with Beijing
　

TRADE SOFTLY: The former deputy assistant secretary of state said increasing cross-strait trade could greatly benefit Taiwan, but questioned Beijing’s motivation
　

Fang Cheng-hsiang and Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTERS
Sunday, Jun 21, 2009, Page 3
　

The Chinese government’s plan to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Taiwan is aimed not just at bolstering cross-strait commerce, but at stifling the Taiwanese independence movement, a former US official said in Taipei on Friday.

Susan Shirk, former deputy assistant secretary of state during the administration of former US president Bill Clinton, made the remarks when asked about President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) eagerness to sign an ECFA.

Under Ma, the government has proposed signing an ECFA with China, saying that it is urgently needed for Taiwan because a free-trade agreement between China and ASEAN will take effect next year, which would further marginalize Taiwan and cripple its trade-dependent economy.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), however, has warned that the agreement would jeopardize Taiwan’s sovereignty, make it too economically dependent on China and lead to an influx of Chinese capital and goods.

At the press event on Friday, Shirk said that she believed increasing trade across the Taiwan Strait could greatly benefit Taiwan, but added that Taiwan should never underestimate the risk and urged the nation to further investigate Beijing’s motives behind the ECFA.

Taiwan has an “efficient government” with regular, democratic elections, she said. Therefore, if the public is worried that China might eventually absorb Taiwan’s economy, the people should express their concern with their ballots.

Shirk did not elaborate whether she meant the issue should be put to a referendum.

In her book titled China: The Fragile Superpower, Shirk wrote about the disparity of wealth in China and the Chinese public’s increased desire for democracy as the economy booms.

Shirk on Friday said that as the international community witnesses the rise of Beijing, it is important to be mindful of China’s “fragile interior,” which would make Chinese authorities more stringent and harder to predict.

To quell any suspicion or worries from the international community, China’s diplomacy could be described as more flexible, she said. But despite the changes, China still has many problems.

In related news, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) urged the public to sign a petition asking the government to hold a referendum on the ECFA issue during a visit to Kaohsiung City yesterday.

Tsai said her party estimated that the proposed economic treaty would affect around 4 million people, especially laborers and farmers in central and south Taiwan.

“The public must stand up and say no to Ma, who is following China and moving toward unification,” she said.

The DPP has said it plans to collect 100,000 signatures by the end of next month in the first stage of its plan to call a referendum.

Tsai said that the party hopes to collect at least 6,600 signatures in Kaohsiung City.

The Referendum Act (公投法) stipulates that the signatures of 0.5 percent of eligible voters — approximately 80,000 — must be collected to apply for a referendum.

In the second stage, 5 percent of eligible voters — approximately 800,000 — must sign the petition before the Referendum Review Committee will sanction the proposed referendum.

Ma has voiced his opposition to a referendum on the ECFA issue, saying that the proposed agreement was not a political issue.

Ma administration doesn’t understand ‘government’
　

NEW BOSS, NEW RULES: A former Taiwan Foundation for Democracy member said the KMT didn’t respect decisions that were made under the former DPP government
　

By Chiu Yen-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Jun 21, 2009, Page 3

Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌), who recently resigned from his position as a member of the supervisory board of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), said in an interview last Monday that since the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the government has displayed a skewed understanding of the word “government.”

“It seems that only the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] government qualifies as a government, while the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] government was not a government,” he said.

As a result, members of the TFD, the Overseas Chinese Culture and Education Foundation and the Council for Hakka Affairs have been replaced for a variety of reasons, Hsiao said.

“I think this is frightening,” Hsiao said.

In response to speculation that the government wanted former KMT legislator Huang Teh-fu (黃德福) to take over as president of the TFD, Hsiao said no one would raise an eyebrow as long as a suitable person was chosen as replacement, but that in his view, “Huang is too partisan.”

Hsiao said what he found frightening about the government was that “while it criticizes others, it turns around and does exactly the same thing that it is criticizing others for doing.”

The Council for Hakka Affairs used to hold a meeting every two months, he said, but since Ma became president, the meetings are often skipped.

With new council members set to be appointed next week, Hsiao said the government’s approach to handling groups like the council “is to avoid holding regular meetings and then appointing new members once the terms are up.”

Hsiao said the Overseas Chinese Commission’s Overseas Chinese Culture and Education Foundation had also replaced board members. Although it was within the government’s rights to appoint board members, he questioned whether the new members had sufficient expertise.

Hsiao said he suspected that although the government claimed the changes were being made to improve the groups, they were in fact politically motivated.

There were also reports that the Foundation for Excellent Journalism Award, the National Culture and Arts Foundation and the Public Television Service — which all cooperated well with the previous government — have had problems applying for funds since Ma took office and that lower officials were afraid to contact the Ma government.

Hsiao said he felt these were the most objectionable aspects of the Ma administration.

Despite the fact that there had been a change in government, cooperation with all these organizations should still be possible, but the present government refuses to cooperate with any organization that had good relations with the former DPP government.

“This is very serious,” he said. “And this must come from the top, with lower-level staff afraid to question it.”

Hsiao said the Ma government is active when it comes to replacing people, but passive when it comes to cooperation. It uses these two approaches to deal with agencies, foundations and other green organizations in the DPP periphery, he added.

“This is very unprofessional,” he said. “They have completely misunderstood the fact that there is only one government. It seems only the KMT government qualifies as a government, and that when someone else is in power, they are [something different].”

Must pro-Taiwanese flee again?
　

By Lee Hsiao-Feng 李筱峰
Sunday, Jun 21, 2009, Page 8

Two new books have come out recently: A Perfect Escape (逃亡) by former presidential advisor Peng Ming-min (彭明敏), revealing the details of his escape from Taiwan 39 years ago, and Zhiyan (“Straight Talk,” 直言) by former Taiwanese representative to Switzerland Rex Wang (王世榕), depicting his six years of work and life in Switzerland. That these books have been released while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is trying to restore the one-party state system has had an emotional impact on me.

During former US president Richard Nixon’s visit to then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) and former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Mao Zedong (毛澤東) in February 1972, Zhou and Mao accused Nixon and the US of supporting the Taiwanese independence movement. They further told a baffled Nixon that Peng managed to escape Taiwan because of help clandestinely provided by the US. With the publishing of Peng’s new book, we now know that Nixon was wrongly accused.

Peng’s years in exile finally brought him to the US, which encouraged the overseas Taiwanese independence movement. The face-loving KMT could not accept such an insult. Dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) told the US government that he did not want Peng to be allowed to stay in the US, even if it meant Chiang would have to give up US military assistance. This is clear evidence of how hostile the KMT was toward Taiwan independence at the time.

As dean of the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, Peng was originally one of the Taiwanese elites trained by the Chiang regime. He served as an advisor to Taiwan’s delegation to the UN. In addition, he was also elected as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of Taiwan.

If Peng had played up to those in power, he could have been riding on the crest of his success. However, the upright professor did not do so, and instead released the Declaration of Self-Salvation of the Taiwanese People (台灣人民自救宣言) written together with his students Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏) and Wei Ting-chao (魏廷朝) in 1964. The declaration was an attempt to call for one China and one Taiwan (一中一台), disregard provincial origin, adopt a new constitution and rejoin the UN “as a member of the free world.”

While these concepts have now entered mainstream public opinion, they insulted the government at the time. Peng was sentenced to eight years in prison, although Chiang finally granted him amnesty because of international pressure. But under the Chiang family dictatorship, Peng worried he might be murdered, and he hammered out a plan to escape.

An autocratic regime cannot tolerate outstanding and upright individuals. This is why German dictator Adolf Hitler could not tolerate scientist Albert Einstein and why the Chiang regime could not keep Peng.

Following the agitation of democratic movements home and abroad, Taiwan finally embarked on democratization in the 1990s and various Taiwanese elites in exile returned to the nation. Taiwanese no longer had to leave their country to escape persecution from the dictatorship.

In 2000, the first pro-Taiwan government appeared, although it still had to accept the structure of the previous foreign regime. Apart from KMT members and supporters accused of corruption and economic crimes, no one had to flee the country, especially not because of dissenting political opinion. Instead, pro-­independence elites began serving as envoys abroad. A perfect example is Wang, who took up the post of de facto ambassador to Switzerland.

Wang served in Switzerland for six years, beginning in July 2002. His book Zhiyan discusses that time and is as historically valuable as Peng’s book.

Despite the transfer of ruling power and the fact that prominent pro-­localization figures were dispatched to foreign countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the nation’s overseas embassies were still filled with bureaucrats steeped in the traditional “Chinese government bureaucracy” with outdated ways of thinking making the work of Taiwanese representatives strenuous.

In his new book, Wang spares no words in stating that the current government bureaucracy is no different from the past, as it is still bogged down in an enormous out-dated administrative system that violated modern organizational principles. In the end, Wang began contemplating retirement.

Last year, the remainders of the regime that forced Peng into exile returned to power. This government, which used to be vehemently opposed to Communist China has now begun fawning on the CCP and has sunk to becoming Beijing’s representative in Taiwan. Taiwan’s sovereignty and human rights have been gradually undermined, and the chance that pro-Taiwanese figures would represent the nation overseas has altogether disappeared. I cannot help but wonder whether the upright Taiwanese that love democracy, freedom and the rule of law will have to go into exile again. Should we Taiwanese not be worried?

Lee Hsiao-feng is a professor in the Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture at National Taipei University of Education.

Environment is basic human right
　

By Hsu Chang-chin 徐昌錦
Sunday, Jun 21, 2009, Page 8

We are always being told how we need to protect the environment and save the Earth, but these things cannot be done by just having summit meetings, where a few leaders mouth slogans. Governments need to show the way by turning their words into practical action, otherwise, when the conferences close, their resolutions vanish without a trace.

The best way for the government to show it really cares about the environment and win backing from the public would be to incorporate environmental rights into the Constitution along with other basic human rights guaranteed by the state.

As it stands, our Constitution does not list environmental rights among basic, guaranteed human rights, and it does not say that the state has a duty to protect the environment and ecology, which are the basis of human survival. Only among the additional articles of the Constitution is it written that “environmental and ecological protection shall be given equal consideration with economic and technological development.”

The wording of this sentence is rather abstract, and it is only a guideline for national policy. Citizens cannot rely on such a clause for support in executive or constitutional matters. Clearly, this clause does not offer adequate legal protection for citizens’ crucial rights. As for the Basic Environment Act (環境基本法) enacted in 2001, although it is called a “basic law,” in reality it is just an ordinary law passed by the legislature, not one with constitutional authority.

The Declaration of the UN Conference on the Human Environment adopted in Stockholm in 1972 proclaims: “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations.”

The notion of environmental rights is clearly embodied in these words. Environmental rights are also expressly included in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, Article 37 which reads: “A high level of environmental protection and the improvement of the quality of the environment must be integrated into the policies of the Union and ensured in accordance with the principle of sustainable development.”

Around 60 countries around the world have already included environmental rights in their constitutions. Among them are France, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, Spain and Israel. Although the federal Constitution of the US does not specifically include environmental rights, they are written into the constitutions of many states, such as Pennsylvania, Illinois and New York.

The point of all these environmental provisions is to give people the right to demand a safe, comfortable and healthy environment, to reject pollution and to take action to prevent damage to the natural environment. They give the public the right to know about nature and ecology, to receive environmental education and to take part in environmental protection activities, and they seek to protect the integrity of the ecosystem.

Over the years, Taiwanese have not paid due attention to environmental values. Environmental damage and pollution caused by human activity has gone beyond what the natural ecosystem can assimilate or recover from without active intervention. Successive governments keep talking about how they want to protect the environment, save energy, cut carbon emissions and reduce global warming, but there have been few observable actions to match their words. The environmental policy stated in our Constitution can scarcely be called a clear expression of environmental rights, since it gives equal weight to economic, scientific and technological development on the one hand and environmental and ecological protection on the other, saying that neither should be emphasized to the neglect of the other.

Protecting the environment is vital for human life, health and dignity. In reality, however, when the government encounters conflicts between environmental protection and economic development, the clause of the Constitution calling for both factors to be given equal emphasis is usually forgotten. Generally the outcome of such conflicts of interest is that environmental and ecological concerns have to give way to the demands of economic development. Each time, mankind’s insatiable appetite to devour resources prevails, while the natural environment and people’s quality of life are degraded.

Listing environmental rights among the basic human rights protected by the Constitution would make it clear that, in situations where conflicts between economic and technological interests and environmental protection cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides, it is environmental protection that must be given priority. Only then can we ensure the sustainable development of human society and the natural environment for this and future generations.

The notion of human rights is not a static concept, but a dynamic one. New ideas about rights are added as society develops. Let us hope the next time the Constitution is revised, lawmakers will not forget to add environmental rights to the list of basic rights protected by the Constitution.

Hsu Chang-chin is a High Court judge.

DPP’s ‘two birds’ may stay stuck in ‘birdcage’
　

By Chen Shih-meng 陳師孟
Sunday, Jun 21, 2009, Page 8

The opposition parties are launching a petition to call for a referendum on the government’s planned economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China. I sympathize deeply with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) description of this campaign as “crucial to Taiwan’s future” in a recent open letter. Yet I think there is still room for discussion on how the petition should be presented.

The suggested main text for the referendum reads: “Do you agree that the government should put an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) signed by Taiwan and China to a referendum for the Taiwanese people to decide?” In other words, it is a referendum on whether to hold a referendum.

As indicated on the DPP’s Web site and in Tsai’s open letter, the referendum campaign is not an attempt to cause trouble, but is in fact aimed at killing two birds with one stone.

TWO BIRDS

On the one hand, the petition is part of an effort to address the fact that such an important policy as the signing of an ECFA with China must gain public support before it is carried out. On the other hand, as Tsai’s open letter says, “it sets the precedent that the government must put any future major cross-strait agreement to a referendum for the public to decide.”

Thus, if the referendum were to pass, it would mean the current Referendum Act (公投法) would have to be amended so the executive branch would be granted the legal responsibility to call a referendum. The Cabinet would then have to take responsibility for a referendum directly on an ECFA.

However, maybe the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has taught me a lesson. I am not as optimistic as the DPP and always expect the worst. Article 13 of the Referendum Act stipulates that “outside of the provisions of this act, government agencies shall not, under any guise, conduct or commission others to conduct referendums; nor shall they make use of any funds or assign any government personnel for the purpose.”

Articles 2 and 14 also state that the proposed referendum shall be verified and approved by the authorities. Since the DDP knows that the main text of its proposed referendum violates the Referendum Act, it should be prepared for the possibility that the government will reject the proposal.

ONE BIRDCAGE

If this is the case, the “birdcage” on referendums will remain in place and delay the opportunity for the public to review an economic pact with China. The KMT will then use this as an excuse to continue doing whatever it likes.

The Tinbergen Principle in economics says that to attain a given number of independent economic targets, there must be at least an equal number of applicable policy instruments. Based on this, the DPP’s strategy to kill two birds with one stone is very likely to fail.

I suggest that in addition to the current proposed referendum, the Taiwan Solidarity Union take the initiative to propose another direct referendum on an ECFA lest the Ma government obstruct the proposal by citing Article 9 of the Referendum Act, which stipulates that “each referendum proposal is limited to one issue.”

Signatures can be collected for the two proposals at the same time. This will minimize social cost and maximize the odds of holding a referendum. Faced with such a peremptory and arrogant ruling party, it is best for the opposition parties to work together.

Chen Shih-meng is chairman of the Beanstalk Workshop.