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.
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.
posted by History on Film at 12:59 AM
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