TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, eight Taiwanese
pro-democracy activists organized a human rights day march in the
southern city of Kaohsiung. When police blocked the progress of the
demonstrators (who had a permit), violence broke out. The
organizers were arrested, court-martialed for sedition, and
sentenced to between 8 and 13 years in prison. Taiwan was a
one-party dictatorship then, and governed under martial law. But
following the death in 1988 of Chiang Kai-shek's son who was then
Taiwan's president, the island swiftly democratized.
Taiwan's new democracy was admittedly young and a bit ragged around
the edges leading into Saturday's presidential election, but it had
all the appearances of a successful system. One reason had been the
stabilizing influence of the Kuomintang (the "Chinese Nationalist
Party," also known as the KMT), one of the oldest political parties
in Asia, if not necessarily a particularly democratic one. After
its defeat in the 2000 presidential polls by Taiwan's Democratic
Progressive ("Green") party, the KMT formed a loose "Blue"
coalition with other Taiwanese parties of the right which still
wield significant influence in the country's legislature. The KMT
coalition's most senior leaders, its dignified chairman, Dr. Lien
Chan, and his vice presidential running mate, Dr. James Soong, were
both respected in international circles as cultured and erudite
politicians from one of Asia's most successful economies.
But that is over. On Saturday night, after a hard fought
presidential campaign and a whisker-thin loss at the ballot box,
the KMT coalition lashed out in a decidedly undemocratic way. The
above-mentioned KMT elders abandoned the rule of law on Saturday
night and Sunday by supporting--whenever they weren't
leading--menacing crowds that laid siege to the Presidential Office
in Taipei and abetted unrest in other cities. The election losers
encouraged crowds in Taichung City to stage a midnight sit-in at
judicial offices. At 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, KMT rioters in Kaohsiung
broke down barricades at that city's procuratorate offices only to
be repelled by a massive police presence.
Events began to spiral out of control on Saturday evening. When the
last presidential vote was finally penciled in on the last
hand-notated tally sheet, the KMT's Lien-Soong ticket lost to
Taiwan's incumbent president, Chen Shui-bian, by a mere 29,518
votes (out of nearly 14 million). The 0.2 percent margin was surely
a disappointing loss. This disappointment was no doubt compounded
by deep, but unspoken, guilt that perhaps the KMT had brought the
loss on itself.
THE KMT MIGHT HAVE ATTRACTED that extra margin of support it had
not treated last Friday's election-eve assassination attempt on
President Chen and his running mate with such callousness. The
president was in Southern Taiwan on Friday on a whistle-stop
motorcade city tour in an open-air Jeep when a bullet shot through
the front windscreen. Rather than ripping head-on into President
Chen's stomach, the bullet struck at the very instant President
Chen turned to wave and carved a bloody half-inch deep groove 8
inches along his abdomen--the wound required 11 stitches. A second
bullet apparently ricocheted into Vice President Annette Lu's knee.
Ear-splitting strings of firecrackers masked the two pops from the
assassin's pistol, and the unknown assailant (police believe there
might have been a second shooter) disappeared into the crowd.
With the initial shock of the attack, Chairman Lien muttered his
condolences and dispatched an aide to the hospital. But as news
came that the president's wound, though deep, was superficial, the
KMT campaign was seized with the prospect that a sympathy vote
might cost them the election.
Almost immediately the KMT rumor machine slipped into overdrive.
Private mobile phones all over Taiwan began getting text-messages
that the assassination was a fraud and asked the receiver to pass
it on. Soon, unsympathetic taxi drivers began telling foreigners
(myself included, several times) that they heard Chen had staged
the attack to gain votes. But this whispering campaign got little
traction. That evening, eight hours after the president had been
attacked, Jaw Shao-kang and legislator Sisy Chen, of the KMT
coalition's far right wing, presided over TV talk shows which
openly accused the president of faking his medical reports and
clucked approvingly while others postulated that President Chen had
arranged for himself to be shot in the gut. I watched two separate
programs Friday evening and was appalled by the vitriol and
outright lies that these people countenanced. Most Taiwanese I
spoke with on voting day were equally horrified.
THIS WAS THE SUBPLOT when KMT Chairman Lien Chan had to face a
crowd of thousands on Saturday evening to admit that he had lost
the election. I listened to his speech which began on a dignified
note: "This is an historical turning point for Taiwan," he began,
and then he indicated how difficult such a close defeat was. He
called for "coolness and reasonableness" (lengjing lixing). There
were people crying in the audience. I was impressed by Dr. Lien's
decorum and awaited his concession. But then he asserted "the
shooting incident had a direct impact on the election that, coupled
with many other suspicious issues, have clearly left the public
with the strong impression that the election was unfair."
Lien was not willing to concede. Far from it. He then averred
darkly that he did "not know how we would face the next generation
if we left this injustice unrepaired." "I will file a complaint to
nullify this election," Lien said. Then appeared Dr. James Soong,
generally considered the éminence grise of Taiwan's "Blue"
movement. Soong, too, insisted that the people of Taiwan were
"cheated." Chen Shui-bian's so-called assassination was a nefarious
act designed to eliminate the KMT's support with manufactured
tragedy. "The election is invalid," he declared. The crowd began a
chant "in-valid, in-valid, in-valid." "We will demand that every
last ballot box be checked, and every last ballot be recounted,"
declared Soong, and the multitudes chanted "re-count, re-count,
re-count."
I hurried to President Chen's campaign headquarters to hear his
response. But Chen gave a gracious speech expressing "my highest
respects to Mr. Lien and Mr. Soong." The president's campaign
manager explained that he purposefully refrained from mentioning
the Lien-Soong challenge to the election for fear of stirring the
massive horn-blowing, flag-waving crowd to anger.
After the president's departure and only after his thousands of
supporters had gone home, the campaign briefed foreign observers on
the KMT's election challenge. The briefers--Taiwan's top lawyers
populate the uppermost ranks of the Greens--explained that filing a
for a recount is the KMT's right, but they could see no grounds for
the challenge--not to mention that there is no recount provision in
Taiwan's election law. All counting is done by election
commissioners at each station in accordance with specific rules,
and once the count is completed and certified, that's it. In this
election, they said, the Central Election Commission has already
ruled that the DPP won. The CEC noted that either side can
challenge a specific polling place's vote count in the High Court,
but that there must be evidence of illegal interference with the
voting. Again, as far as the DPP could see, there was none.
The KMT then began to focus their public case not on the margin of
their loss, but on the charge that "Chen Shui-bian cheated us with
a faked assassination attempt." The accusation of a staged
assassination, had already been disproved by a steady stream of
interviews with the Hospital doctors, police, and body guards. Not
to mention common sense. (Chen: "So, I stand in the car, and then a
guy is going to shoot me with a bullet, through the windshield into
my abdomen, but I should be careful to turn aside so the bullet
will only cut a half-inch slice through me? . . . . What's Plan
B?")
THE VITRIOL with which the story is being kept alive by the most
passionate KMT old-guard appalls even younger Blue supporters. The
spectacle of Dr. Lien and Dr. Soong posing absurd legal challenges
to a properly conducted election and calling for the election's
"invalidation" was no more worrisome than Al Gore's challenge to
the 2000 Florida count. More disturbing was the way the two spun up
the crowd by hinting that the president's shooting was a campaign
stunt, and declaring that "the election was null" because it was
"unfair."
The KMT's argument is that the "faked" shooting led Taiwan's
premier to declare a military emergency--canceling leave for some
200,000 troops who didn't get to vote. Blue supporters claim that
they poll well among military professionals. But they neglect to
say that most of the military are young, educated Taiwanese
conscripts who generally vote for President Chen's party.
In any event, "unfairness" would not have an impact on the actual
vote counting, so the KMT is now focusing on irregularities. The
first stab at that legal tack came just a few minutes after 2:00
a.m. on Sunday when a High Court spokesman (apparently anticipating
a long night) appeared on television to report that he received
faxed complaints from 21 localities and was in the process of
referring the complaints to the appropriate lower local
prosecutors. He didn't elaborate, but did say the lower courts were
prepared to take up the cases Sunday morning. The relief
demanded--according to the headline across the top of the video
display was to "nullify the election."
It soon became apparent that the Blue's public case lacked
substance. Ninety minutes later Taiwan TV began running a video
clip of a woman bringing her two little daughters into the voting
booth and letting them put her two referendum ballots into the
appropriate boxes--she had already put her presidential ballot in a
third box. A news reporter interviewed a former KMT Chiayi county
magistrate who, seeing the clip, gasped in horror that "little
children can now take a ballot and little children can now vote."
The late-night crowd behind him roared in howls of
indignation.
All Sunday night, Dr. Lien and Dr. Soong sat sullenly at their
defeat rally in central Taipei surrounded by thousands of enflamed
supporters. At 4:17 a.m., before the sky brightened, they finally
arose to lead their large and boisterous crowd down the boulevards
to the presidential mansion, guarded by a long a phalanx of police.
Taiwan's High Court finally ordered all jurisdictions to "seal
ballot boxes" as potential evidence in an effort to mollify the
protesting throngs. But the throngs blocked all traffic into the
governmental district on Sunday afternoon, their ranks swelled by
sympathizers from outside Taipei. They were still there on
Monday.
IT HAS BEEN a most disillusioning spectacle. I have seen two men
whom I have admired for the past 20 years turn into hate-mongers. I
watched as they incited followers to late night demonstrations,
which they must have known could turn violent. They urged their
supporters to demand that legitimate offices of government abdicate
their responsibilities and surrender ballot boxes to repair
imagined injuries. And by not urging restraint, their actions
countenanced violence against law enforcement officers.
It is supremely ironic. In 1979, Taiwan's upper level KMT
ministers--including minister of Communications Lien Chan and
Government Information director James Soong--nodded in approval
when young Taiwanese democracy activists were sentenced to eight
years in prison for less than KMT leaders have done in the past two
days. But times have changed. The democracy activists and defense
attorneys of 25 years ago are now Taiwan's president Chen
Shui-bian, vice president Annette Lu, Kaohsiung mayor Frank Hsieh ,
Examination Yuan president Yao Chia-wen, and labor minister Chen
Chu. This time, KMT leaders countenance mob rule. But Taiwan has
changed dramatically in the last quarter-century. It is unlikely
that Drs. Lien and Soong will be court-martialed for their part in
inciting this latest unrest, much less sentenced to prison.
It is a sign that democratic ideals have indeed taken hold in
Taiwan if not in the KMT.
- John J. Tkacik Jr. is a research fellow in the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation.
First appeared in The Weekly Standard