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Bulletgate
missive misses the mark
TAIPEI
TIMES
By
Ming-chi Wu
Monday,
Aug 09, 2004,Page 8
Briton
Sir Ernest Benn (1875-1954) once stated, "Politics is the art
of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not,
diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."
Benn's words very well describe the crusade Taiwan's pan-blues have
entertained since President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President
Annette Lu were shot on March 19 while campaigning in Tainan.
Since
that fateful day, the pan-blues have held that the assassination
attempt was a scam, that there were irregularities in the ballot
count, that huge numbers of military personnel were kept from
voting, that the invalid ballot count was suspiciously high, and
that therefore the March 20 presidential elections should be
nullified.
A
fancy pamphlet titled "Bulletgate" has been distributed
throughout the US in an attempt to win hearts and minds to the
pan-blue cause. Instead of the desired outcome, however, the
pan-blue diatribe has people in Washington shaking their heads.
Instead
of winning over the US Congress, the think tank world and the media
with "Bulletgate" the pan-blue alliance is playing Russian
roulette with its own credibility. Not only has the pamphlet turned
out to be an inappropriate lobby ploy, it is an embarrassment for
the nation that this internal political affair was brought into US
politics by the pan-blues.
The
day after the publication landed in US congressional offices, we at
the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) received a copy
sent to us by a Congressional office, accompanied by the comment of
a staffer saying: "This is an example of how NOT to
lobby."
The
2000 US presidential election was hotly contested and was finally
decided by a Supreme Court vote. While many Democrats believe to
this day that Al Gore should have been declared president, the whole
country decided to move forward and accept the rule of law as
underscored by the Supreme Court.
US
politicians and policy makers understand that Chen and his
Democratic Progressive Party are committed to the rule of law and
have consistently refused to use the illegal, unconstitutional means
that the pan-blue alliance has suggested to resolve the 2004
election disputes. Such non-constitutional means have included
asking Chen to declare a state of emergency -- which to all intents
and purposes means martial law -- and using the huge powers such a
declaration would give him to order a recount on his own initiative
rather than use the constitutionally established procedure.
The
US emphasis on the rule of law has been loud and clear, and US
policymakers have shown that they trust Chen to carry out his legal
responsibilities.
On
March 26, the White House released a statement congratulating Chen
and the people of Taiwan on the "successful conclusion of their
March 20 presidential election."
The
statement continued, "We recognize that there are pending legal
challenges to the results of the March 20 election. We applaud the
people of Taiwan for embracing established legal mechanisms and
rejecting extra-legal options to resolve their differences. We
reject calls for violence, which threaten the very democratic
principles to which we and the people of Taiwan are committed."
At
an April 21 hearing on the Taiwan Relations Act, Representative Dan
Burton asked a series of questions regarding the election -- about
the investigation into the shooting incident and the number of
military personnel who were allegedly kept from voting. Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asia James Kelly gave a clear response:
"[Our] view is essentially, these are questions that the people
and the institutions of Taiwan are more than capable of resolving
for themselves. And our view is that the process is proceeding in
which these questions are going to be resolved in a legitimate and
appropriate way."
When
Burton again asked about an investigation into the shooting, Kelly
was even more forceful.
"Even
assuming that the inauguration goes ahead on May 20, this coming
December there's going to be elections for the Legislative Yuan, for
the legislative body. This is going to provide another opportunity
for the people of Taiwan to make their views known. So there is a
system of checks and balances going on there," he said.
In
short, move forward and stop whining.
On
June 24, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde
introduced and passed resolution HCR462, the 25th Anniversary of the
Taiwan Relations Act. The reason Hyde waited until June to introduce
and pass the resolution was because he wanted to wait until the
commotion surrounding Taiwan's election was over. Obviously, Hyde,
along with the rest of the US Congress, had determined that Chen
would be Taiwan's president for the next four years.
Five
days after the passage of the TRA resolution though, the pan-blue
lobbyists were still not ready to give up. Having exhausted interest
in their conspiracy theory at home in Taiwan, they decided to renew
their effort to take their slanderous campaign to the other side of
the Pacific. As early as April, the pan-blues had begun to publish
advertisements in American newspapers such as the Washington Post,
the Los Angeles Times and the Capitol Hill magazine The Hill. But
when these ads seemed to fall on deaf ears, they decided to start
distributing their "Bulletgate" pamphlet on Capitol Hill
-- a glossy brochure full of unsubstantiated accusations.
Some
in the pan-blue camp might say that they are simply lobbying for a
cause on Capitol Hill, something that we at FAPA have done for over
20 years now. The crucial difference is that FAPA has always lobbied
for US support for democracy for all the people of Taiwan. We have
never attacked persons or political parties to score partisan
points. When FAPA was established over 20 years ago, Taiwan was
under martial law and under the rule of a dictatorship. So FAPA has
always brought out into the open the issues of human rights and
personal and political freedoms, enabling the US to help the people
of Taiwan regain their voice.
By
distributing their "Bulletgate" pamphlet on Capitol Hill,
the pan-blues are playing partisan politics on foreign grounds. They
attack the president and his party, and thus all the president's
supporters. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has never refrained
from hanging dirty laundry in public in a foreign country for the
rest of the world to see. On Oct. 20, 2003 for instance, in a speech
at a Heritage Foundation/American Enterprise Institute sponsored
luncheon in Washington DC, KMT Chairman Lien Chan was notable for
his rigorous criticism of Chen.
Lien
fed his American audience the line that, unlike Chen, Lien himself
would not be a "troublemaker," once elected and that he
would be "more discreet and prudent," that he would
"not add another crisis" to the security problems in East
Asia.
In
his speech, Lien offered not one word of criticism of the PRC. And
not one word about the more than 500 Chinese missiles in Fujian
Province pointed at Taiwan.
Lien's
speech and the "Bulletgate" affair have sullied the KMT/PFP
alliance's reputation in Washington, not that of Chen and the
pan-green coalition.
Clearly,
Bulletgate has missed the mark.
Ming-chi
Wu is president of the Formosan Association for Public
Affairs.
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