Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Taipei blazes red
Taiwan often escapes under the radar of international news.
Even if North Korea's nuclear test wasn't dominating headlines, most would more likely hear about the 10,000 or so protesting against Chavez in the streets of Caracas than the hundreds of thousands now regularly flooding Taipei's streets - day after day, all dressed in red - in protest against President Chen Shui-Bian.
Chen's son-in-law is in jail for insider trading. Chen brushes that off, saying it doesn't effect him. When he regained the Presidency at the last election, he was strongly suspected of faking an assassination attempt on election eve in a (successful) bid to garner sympathy.
He scraped home in the election, and managed to remain in power thereafter in spite of the extremely dubious means by which he seemed to obtain it.
Since then, he has often manoeuvered his country into precarious situations vis-a-vis the People's Republic of China.
This has raised the political temperature not only on the mainland but within Taiwan: Chen's DPP (Democratic People's Party) - the party of many (poor, often darker-skinned) ethnic Taiwanese - has historically been in opposition.
The Kuomintang (KMT) has been Taiwan's traditional party of government ever since Chiang Kai Shek's (wealthy, Mandarin-speaking) nationalists were transplanted to the island en masse in flight from the mainland communists.
The KMT were never comfortable not having power, and less so when they perceived its fast and loose exercise by protagonist Chen.
His latest transgression, being suspected of taking (in conjunction with his wife) large bribes from the Taiwanese owners of the (Japan-headquartered) Sogo department store chain, has sent the temperature over the top.
Prosecutors last week said Chen's wife Wu Shu-chen did receive and spend about 300,000 Taiwan dollars (9,090 US) of department store vouchers but cleared her of accepting the gifts in exchange for lobbying favors for lack of evidence.
That is, as seems to be the pattern with Chen, he has achieved (superficial) plausible denial of the charges at hand. The pattern itself, however, cannot be denied.
Particularly so in a country that takes its politics very very seriously: television often shows the fisticuffs on the floor of the parliament there, and many have heard that the non-compulsory electoral turn-out is in the vicinity of 80% of eligible voters.
That's the passion that has now driven them to the streets. Yet Chen's still saying he won't step down.
