A bedtime story about the KMT

Although I was born in Canada I have lived in Taipei, Taiwan for the past ten years, so I am naturally interested in the local politics because they are often fascinating. Watching Taiwanese struggle for the rights and liberties that Canadians take for granted has been a humbling experience. Taiwan, otherwise known as the Republic of China or the place where China is pointing all of those missiles, was under martial law from 1947 until 1987. The first democratic presidential election was in 1996 and the Kuomintang (KMT), which had ruled Taiwan since 1945, lost power in 2000 to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The handover was relatively peaceful, although the then mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-Jeou, sang songs and cried with a large group of diehard, elderly KMT supporters. Manly sorrow aside, the KMT seemed to accept its role as the opposition party.
However, while a new job might have been a pleasant change for a while, the KMT leadership wanted their old offices back, so the KMT leader, Lien Chan, agreed to run with James Soong, the leader of the People's First Party (PFP), made up largely of renegade KMT politicians, during the 2004 presidential election. Since the two of them had run against each other in the previous election and their combined percentage of votes had been 59.9% against Chen Shui-Bian's 39.3%, they understandably expected that a team-up gauranteed victory. Unfortunately, an apparently mentally unstable man attempted to assassinate Chen with a homemade gun days before the election and a wave of sympathy swept him to a narrow victory.
Taiwanese are fascinated by American culture, worshipping Michael Jordan, rap and McDonald's, so a mildly strange assassination attempt should not seem so odd. However, the losing duo refused to accept defeat so graciously this time. It was bad enough that Soong and Chan had had to pretend that they liked each other during an excruciatingly long campaign, but if they waited another four years, that pesky youngster Ma Ying-Jeou, with his do-gooder reputation and habit of posing for campaign photos in jogging shorts, might have the temerity to think that it was his turn to represent the KMT.
They were not alone in thinking that four more years with a DPP president was simply too much and crowds of protestors gathered in front of the Kaoshiung District Court in Kaoshiung, Taiwan's second largest city, with the intention of storming the building and finding the truth. The local constabulary was sent to prevent them for doing just that. Now in the west, you might expect to read that people were hurt due to excessive brutality and that is exactly what happened except that the injured people were the police not the protestors. The police had placed a barrier across the road leading to the court but the protestors would not be denied so a man with a megaphone stood on the bed of a large truck that repeatedly rammed the barrier in harmony with his shouted commands.
As I watched this on TV, I wondered who was this would-be knight and why did the police not shoot the tires of the truck or the driver? Well, the man urging his mighty steed against a surprisingly frail barrier supported only by roughly thirty or forty policemen, who probably wished they were anywhere else, was PFP legislator Chiu Yi. While there was never an official explanation, a large percentage of the government had been on the receiving end of police brutality when they were protesting the KMT dictatorship and quite a few had spent years in prison for daring to suggest that democracy might not be a bad thing, so my guess is that the police were told to be as gentle as possible. In fact, they were so gentle that eight of them ended up in the hospital and Chiu ended up being charged with illegal assembly.
The camera crew was able to get close enough to record him shouting "One, two, three" during the protest but Chiu countered that he was merely saying "stop, stop, stop". Ah, the media, they twist everything completely out of proportion. Well, Taiwan's supreme court chose to believe the videotape instead of Chiu's side of the story and he was sentenced to fourteen months in jail. Possibly the $300 Canadian that he distributed to each of the injured policemen explains the light sentence.
Chiu could have saved the money and bought a bigger truck for the next election becuase while the DPP runs the government, the KMT controls the legislature and they arranged for a get out of jail after serving seven months card. You see, the number of legislative seats will be slashed in half for the upcoming 2007 legislative election, which is intended to improve the quality of the legislature. Competition for the remaining districts has been fierce but the KMT realizes that it needs candidates of the highest moral character if it is going to retain control of the legislature and who better to represent the KMT as a legislator-at-large than the noble Sir Chiu Yi.

Why Bono Should Shut The F**K UP!

During the recent G8 conference, Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and tireless campaigner for aid to Africa criticized Canada as being a lagard in giving aid to the African continent. This is not the first time that Bono, tireless campaigner for aid to Africa, has criticized the aid policy of the democratically elected government of Canada. In 2005, he criticized then prime minister Paul Martin for breaking a personal pledge to increase Canada's aid to Africa. As a Canadian, I must say that I find this to be more than a little impolite.
I am describing Bono as a tireless campaigner for aid to Africa because unlike Bill Gates, he is not a tireless donor to aid groups in Africa. Bono shared Time's 2005 Persons of the Year cover with Bill and Melinda Gates although this does not seem fair since Bono only pays his own airfare and meals when he travels to lobby important people while Gates has donated billions of dollars to the fight against AIDs and tuberculosis. To the best of my knowledge, despite the fact that U2 is one of the most successful bands in the past twenty years, he has never actually donated money to any of the aid groups he is touting. Then again, perhaps I am being unfair. His financial situation may not be as strong as I thought, since his band had to move their multi-million dollar song catalogue from their native Ireland to Holland where the taxes are lower. I can only presume that his tireless campaigning for aid to Africa has prevented him from making enough to live on. Either that or he does not like to pay taxes.
Anyway, I am getting away from my main point, which is that Bono should shut the F**K up. Bono's repeated description of Canada as a rich country is inaccurate, as a visit to any hospital should make abundantly clear. Canada appears to be well off because it has had a balanced budget for the past ten years and its economy has been growing steadily for much of that time. However, all that this means is that it has reached the stage where it can start to pay off its very large debt and put some money aside for the future. It only seems rich because no other developed nation aside from Australia has managed to accomplish this basic task. I am no fan of Stephen Harper, but if he chooses to listen to the voters (at least the people who voted for him) rather than a holier-than-thou rock star who is too cheap to donate anything other than hot air, well it looks like he is doing his job.
If Bono wants to help the poor people in Africa, maybe he could hold a series of concerts where all of the ticket and merchandise sales are given to aid groups. Then instead of being a tireless campaigner for aid to Africa he could be a tireless contributor to aid groups in Africa. Unless of course he prefers to tell other people how to spend their money. That and not pay his taxes.
By the way, one of the reasons why countries like France, Italy, Britain, Germany and America feel obligated to donate to Africa is that they are former colonial powers and realize that they are partly responsible for the current situation. Canada is a former colony, not colonial power, and its only involvement in the African continent was peacekeeping missions.
Oh, and Bono, one last thing. Shut the F**K up.