The bill would allow police force to be used when necessary to remove legislators who are filibustering or obstructing legislation. This would effectively kill the only speedbumps the DPP can put in front of KMT bills.

Speaker Wang Jin-pyng would be the one authorized to call in the police force, but as I recall he's not a fan of doing this -- this sort of proposal has come up before and he was always cold to it.

Meanwhile, the legislature has sent the four cross-strait agreements recently signed by Chiang and Chen to appropriate committees for review.

As APEC's conference approaches, Beijing's reiteration that "there is only one China in the world" and attempts to force the international media to not refer to Ma as "President" should not surprise anyone who's been paying attention to their unchanging policy.

Read this FEER article on Japan's plan to give everyone vouchers in a similar amount to the ones being proposed in Taiwan; they roundly condemn the effort as cynical, populist and completely ineffective.

President Ma Ying-jeou believes this weekend would be a good time for such discussions with DPP chair Tsai Ing-wen. Sadly, Tsai is unlikely to accept give the political climate; she'd probably get hammered for meeting even if she wanted to.

Insane: President Ma asked to sit down and have a meeting with DPP chair Tsai Ing-wen after he had already met personally with China's ARATS chief. Not once previous to that did he think it meeting with Tsai would be productive.

One of the more bizarre aspects of Taiwanese democracy is the complete lack of high level contacts between the parties. In say, the US, legislative leadership from both parties meet frequently with the President, and aids and lower level people are maintaining contact and conducting negotiations almost constantly. Otherwise, stupid policies like the bailout would never have a chance of passing Congress and winning the president's signature. Things are similar in most European parliamentary systems, where the majority and the opposition have frequent exchanges (not shouting matches). The lack of this level of contacts in Taiwan is one of the major reasons you so rarely see bi-partisan legislation, compromises or even

But not so in Taiwan. First, note the relative importance of the party apparatus here (a relic of Leninist party organization). The most important person in the DPP is the party's chair, not the secretary-general of the legislative caucus. In a case like the KMT's, which has a similar organizational structure, the fact that Ma Ying-jeou is president while Wu Po-hsiung is party chief has caused friction or different stances at various times, despite efforts to work together.

Second, there's such fundamental ideological opposition to each other, it's little wonder the parties have trouble even coming together at a dinner party. At least as importantly, boycotting the other party and minimizing dialog are political tactics used to demonstrate strength, while offering to have talks at inappropriate times is used to feign sincerity.

I don't believe Ma Ying-jeou is intent on selling out Taiwan to China or making unification/annexation a reality in his life time. I think he believes his policy of "no unification, no independence, and no violence" is a middle-of-the-road path that will improve Taiwan's security and economy while improving relations with China, which he sees as a win-win situation. I think he's genuinely frustrated with accusations directed at him for trying to sell out the island.

I also think his policies will lead Taiwan not directly into unification, but to a point of no return, where economic and political relations are at a point where China will be have even such enormous leverage in both the cross-strait and international sphere that the CCP will be able to push for a unification time table of its own choosing and Taiwanese leaders will have few options but to comply and negotiate for minimal concessions.

I think Ma probably is aware of a "point of no return" possibility, but he likely foresees a cooperative, mutual reconciliation and believes China has no motivation to force a political capitulation of the Taiwan authorities. Naturally, I think he's wrong.

Of course, all of this is speculation, as the only person who knows what Ma Ying-jeou really thinks is Ma Ying-jeou. And that is the point I'd like to raise in this post. We are quick to assign the worst motivations to those carrying out policies we believe will be destructive, when they likely believe they are working for the greater good.

So I'd rather see the rhetoric of the Green camp retreat from the emotionally laden attacks of Ma "selling out" Taiwan or Ma's eagerness to bow to China, and instead focus on both the genuine dangers of his vision and presenting constructive alternatives.

Likud opens up a big lead over Kadima.

Liberty Times interviews Ma Ying-jeou in four parts (1 2 3 4), and although the questioning is pretty hostile, I'd say Ma holds his line pretty well. But you also get the sense he is very frustrated with the questioning as well. He is at his weakest when talking about the police taking flags and taking banners from Green protesters' hotel rooms as Chen Yunlin was going to arrive. He has a hard time defending the detentions if you ask me, too.

Also, I believe the Liberty Times failed to ask the kind of questions I'd like to see more of, and instead kept the thought process within the bounds of the media-defined idea of what the issues are. Also, the interviewer makes a critical factual error, claiming the Lien-Hu Joint Announcement (連胡公報) specifically mentions "One China." It does not. But Ma didn't seem to know that either (that's how gotcha questions work sometimes, though; as a politician, you'd rather just not answer the question directly than challenge its premise, for fear of being factually wrong).

Liberty Times reports that the Culture Ministry, which helped print a large number of CDs carrying Song of Taiwan 《台灣之歌》, claims that all of the current copies have been sold out and no more can come to market (it's been selling like crazy since the Chen Yunlin visit and the incident surrounding the song at a music store).

Problem is, a source inside the Ministry told Liberty Times there's at least 5,000 copies left in stock.

Ma’s approval rating cut in half since coming to power (Taipei Times)

Taisugar chairman Wu abruptly resigns position (Taipei Times)

Wu’s abrupt departure was reportedly triggered by pressure from Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung’s (江丙坤) desire to install his nephew Chen Ching-bin (陳清彬) as company president.

Ma's photo removed from APEC website (Taipei Times)
Ma on Tuesday acknowledged the organizer of this year’s APEC summit for using his photograph and referring to him as “president” on the Web site and official documents, saying it indicated his more conciliatory cross-strait policies were working.

It marked the first time that the country’s president was introduced in an APEC document and the first time since Taiwan became an APEC member economy in 1991 that a host country published a picture of a Taiwanese president on the Web site.

Ma’s photograph and other information, however, were later removed from the Web site. Critics suspected China of interfering in the matter.

At Claudia Jean's.

After the KMT held their open forum caucus meeting on amending the parade law (good article in Taipei Times here), where most heavyweights basically agreed to change things only in name and not in form, and where all the NGOs were KMT shrills that nobody has ever heard of before, we were expecting some cosmetic changes to the law without any change in substance.

And that's what we're getting (hat tip Rank MT):
The Executive Yuan has raised the issue of revisions to the Assembly and Parade Law recently. However, the new version adopts a “compulsory notification system” whose content preserves restrictions including “assembling without notification is illegal”, “establishing forbidden areas”, “police have the right to alter the time, place, and form of the parade”, “the [police] can command dissolution of the parade without explicit standards”, and “the criminal and administrative sanctions relating to assembly”. Namely, the revision contains no practical improvements, only the change of name from “permission” to “notification”.

Wow.
The Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ) demanded yesterday that the National Police Agency (NPA) stop pressuring photojournalists to help find potential suspects in the rallies that ensued during a controversial visit made by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yun-lin (陳雲林) earlier this month.

“The police have put the reporters in grave danger by demanding that they rat on their interviewees,” ATJ president Leon Chuang (莊豐嘉) said.

“Such requests disparage the reporters’ right to work safely,” he said.

The ATJ said many photojournalists had filed complaints saying that the police have sought their help in identifying suspects who allegedly took part in the violence.

When the reporters refused to provide the pictures, the police went directly to heads of the news outlets to pressure the reporters into giving up the photos, ATJ said...

The police yesterday said the accusation was groundless, arguing that it is customary for the police to solicit the media’s help in gathering evidence.

Taipei City Policy Bureau media contact Wang Wen-shen (王文伸) shrugged off the accusation saying: “Do you really think the police have enough power to force reporters to do anything?”

While the DPP administration and reputable publishers never went so far as to actually teach children that the KMT constituted an occupying foreign power, that is in fact how many people on the Green side feel. Take a look at this IHT article on a Korean textbook controversy.
To conservative critics, a popular textbook's version of how U.S. and Soviet forces took control of Korea from Japanese colonialists in 1945 exemplifies all that's wrong with how South Korean history is taught to young people today.

The facts no one disputes are that, at the end of World War II, the Soviet military swept into northern Korea and installed a friendly Communist government while a U.S. military administration assumed control in the south.

But then the high school textbook takes a direction that is raising hackles among conservatives. It argues that the Japanese occupation was followed not by a free, self-determining Korea, but by a divided peninsula dominated once again by foreign powers.

"It was not our national flag that was hoisted to replace the Japanese flag," reads the textbook published by Kumsung Publishing. "The flag that flew in its place was the American Stars and Stripes. Our liberation through the Allied forces' victory prevented us from building a new country according to our own wishes."

The article continues.

I saw a related article in the Liberty Times yesterday, and the Taipei Times carries a related article for us today with some more information:

KMT legislator says he was threatened by COA

By Flora Wang And Meggie Lu
STAFF REPORTERS
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2008, Page 3

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) yesterday accused the Council of Agriculture (COA) of asking gangsters to threaten him over a proposed freeze of the council’s budget requests.

Legislators have proposed freezing a NT$2 billion (US$60 million) COA annual budget request intended for subsidies to farmers’ associations or agricultural groups.

KMT Legislator Hsiao Ching-tien (蕭景田) said he had found that the COA could decide whom to give the grant to without having to invite public bids and that COA officials or retirees served as board members of 35 of the organizations that had received grants in the past.

Hsiao then proposed that the COA be required to establish a complete set of screening processes for the grants and oblige the council to report the screening mechanism to the legislature before the budget request would continue to be reviewed....

“The council asked gangsters to threaten to withdraw election support [for me] if [I] didn’t withdraw my proposal,” Chang said.

“The council should do what a government branch has to do and persuade legislators that the budget would be spent on taking care of the public,” Chang said.

Hsiao, who also said he had been pressured, criticized the council’s actions as “inappropriate,” saying the council should communicate with lawmakers through “normal channels.”As Maddog pointed out to me, Chang seems to have accidently admitted that gangsters have regularly supported the KMT caucus secretary-general in previous elections. The Chinese language report from CNA, the fairest wire on the island, bear this theory out (他說‧‧‧怎麼可以去找外面的「兄弟」恐嚇立委若不撤凍結案，選舉時就不支持立委？). Chang also said here that this sort of thing used to happen under the DPP administration, but he's just shocked a KMT-led Executive Yuan council could do the same thing. Good job, KMT-gangster complex!

Second: Chinese-language blogger Tseng Wei-chen (曾韋禎) has found the map of the route devised by the SEF/ARATS team, which renegotiated the line the DPP had been planning with the stated purpose of "replacing the roundabout path with a more direct path." Result? A path that's actually 42 nautical miles longer, and doesn't even LOOK more direct.

Taiwan recently made a slight drop in the Transparency International corruption index, ranking 39th on a list of 180 countries (vs. 34th last year).

One thing you often hear from people in Taiwan is that "every politician is going to be corrupt." And of course to some degree this is true, but there seems to be an inadequate public understanding of the current lack of oversight and the frequent conflicts of interests politicians have.

This is where the Sunshine Laws come in, and why they can be very useful -- if they have teeth. And the KMT and Mr. Clean Ma Ying-jeou has been promising to make them a top priority since 2006. Again, some background on these bills from the Taipei Times:

The "sunshine bills" refer to a series of proposed anti-corruption laws, namely, draft laws on the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties, a lobbying bill, a bill covering political parties, a statute governing the Ministry of Justice's anti-corruption bureau, amendments to the Act on Property Declaration by Public Servants (公職人員財產申報法), the Legislators' Conduct Act (立法委員行為法) and the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法).
...

The DPP's nine sunshine laws cover more ground than the KMT's four sunshine laws. The DPP's proposals regulate not only public servant exercise of power but also conflicts of interests after retirement or in subsequent employment, the acceptance of political donations and lobbying in the legislature. They are stricter and more sophisticated, and extend to party assets and political donations as well as campaign spending.

So if you have any more informatino on the specific ways the sunshine laws would make things better here, please post in them in the comments section.

The Premier is announcing plans to abolish the requirement for foreign brides and grooms of showing NT$420,000 in the bank before they could get permanent residence. All right!

Related post: 92 all over again
More details on the 92 consensus

A couple posts back I made this note:

... In May, Global Vision (遠見雜誌) showed nearly 70% support for the "One China, two interpretations" idea when it is defined as follows:
Our constitution states that "One China" is the ROC, while the Communist Party says "One China" is the PRC. Although we have different stances, as long as both sides can respect the other's principle, we can begin cross-strait discussions.Now just to demonstrate how very insane that formula is, imagine if you put the same question to the Chinese leadership or the Chinese public -- when reversing some key points. Do you think you'd get a positive response?
Our constitution states that "One China" is the PRC, while the Taiwan authorities say "One China" is the ROC. Although we have different stances, as long as both sides can respect the other's principle, we can begin cross-strait discussions.The question would never be asked, it would be even more absurd on the face of it, and it just goes to show how there is neither parity nor real agreement in this so called consensus.

I don't want to give the impression I don't care about or am not following the details of the detentions and court cases. But for those kind of details, i think following the papers is the best way to go about it. Doesn't hurt to read both the Taipei Times and China Post (but I only read China Post online, don't ever buy it). And I certainly don't want to ignore Taiwan News!

In case you needed some helpful reminders (hint hint, Ma Ying-jeou), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has the annual poll summary online for 2007, which nicely condenses Taiwanese public opinion on the status of Taiwan vis à vis China, independence and unification.

• 70-77% of people believe "Taiwan is an independent soverign country."
• 65% oppose the idea that "Taiwan and China are part of one country and share a common fate."
  
• 80% believe Taiwan's future must be decided by Taiwanese, while 76% oppose the idea that it should be decided by Taiwan and China together.
  
• 85% support a referendum on any sovereignty-related agreements between Taiwan and China.
  
• 78% support having relations with China, but less than 25% can support "One country, two systems" at all.
  

In addition, in May, Global Vision (遠見雜誌) showed nearly 70% support for the "One China, two interpretations" idea when it is defined as follows:
Our constitution states that "One China" is the ROC, while the Communist Party says "One China" is the PRC. Although we have different stances, as long as both sides can respect the other's principle, we can begin cross-strait discussions.

「我國憲法裡的『一個中國』是中華民國，中共主張『一個中國』是中華人民共和國，雖然立場不同，但是如果彼此願意尊重對方的主張，來進行兩岸談判」This shows the Taiwanese public is pragmatic; it's almost like double think, that they can agree to hold discussions under a "One China" framework while believing Taiwan is sovereign and independent. But it demonstrates their hope for better relations and their unwillingness to let go of their freedom. It also demonstrates how the language of the media can really shape public opinion.

I posted yesterday on the rhetorical overboard we're now seeing from the Green side as everyone rushes to defend those arrested, especially President Chen. Now for the other side of the coin.

As pretty much everyone in the blogosphere has pointed out recently, the problem isn't that Chen is going to be prosecuted on corruption-related charges. I believe at the end of the day, the trial will be transparent and the evidence should be able to speak for itself.

• Complete lack of due process, with many of the people rounded up being held incommunicado and without charges, including President Chen himself. Chen was in fact being held the night before the prosecutors even had the court approve holding him incommunicado. This is really the most important of all; due process is too vital to be shoved aside in so many cases.
  
• The unevenness of investigations and arrests. It's not just that those arrested have all been higher-level greens; it's that even those blues who are already proven guilty aren't being put in jail, while there's also apparently no investigations going on for Blue country administrators (when we all know they're in one of the best positions to take bribes).
• The "trial by media" occuring as prosecutors and the government leak information to the press, as well as the denial of any possible political motive (Ma himself called his prosecution political back in the day, and is denying that now as well as saying Chen is 'irresponsible' for making such statements).

But what's new?
Article 25 of the Commercial Port Act states that vessels are required to raise the country’s flag along with the flag of its own country when entering and leaving the nation’s harbors.

The cross-strait agreement on sea links did not comply with Article 25 of the Commercial Port Act as it required vessels to raise only flags of their parent companies and not the flags of Taiwan or China when traversing the routes, Liu Han-ting said.