Echo Taiwan

2012 Election Controversy: Official Vote Rigging?

2012-01-26T16:00:00.004+08:00

The 2012 election is over. The incumbent Ma Ying-jeou of KMT party, after a hard fight, won with a comfortable margin of 6% (see the table in the end of this article) over the challenging candidate, Chairperson of the DPP, Dr. Tsai Ing-wen.

To many of Tsai's supporters, however, the election outcome is questionable. That mind set mainly (my observation) comes from two factors: First, the popularity of Tsai prior to the election was so high, making people feel that there's no way Tsai could have lost, let alone lost with such a margin. Secondly, the vote counting process is way too problematic, when comparing to what people experienced in the past elections. People reported all sort of different abnormalities and law violations of the vote counting behaviors in many counting stations all around the country. Just a couple of examples to let readers understand why voters doubt the result,

* When counting Tsai's votes, two tickets were read once, but when counting Ma's, one ticket was read twice;

* Tsai's ballot was read correctly, but was recorded as Ma's when entered into the record;

* At the time of counting process started, people were blocked by the police for 10 to 15 minutes before they were allowed to enter the counting room. When they did enter, the ballot box already opened (this is against the law) and counting already started;

* More common complaints: many stations rushed the counting in a super speedy way such that people who watched were not able to tell if the counting was correct. For example, one station with 700 voters finished the counting of all ~2100 ballots ( each voter has 3 ballots: president, legislator, party) in less than 20 minutes, averaging more than ~105 ballots/minute. If the counting proceeds as required by the law, one ballot would have taken at least 3 seconds. In one minute, you can only count ~20 ballots at most.

These are just the tip of iceberg among overwhelming complaints that I heard.

Because that voters are not allowed to carry any electronic device into the voting room (well, in the location I went to, this rule was violated, too -- people were only asked to turn off the cell phone. Not only was cell phones were allowed, but also there was no check on any other devices), any voting violation can't be caught on camera. And because the vote counting started right after the voting was done at 4 pm sharp, many people who voted and waited to watch the counting didn't have a camera with them. So most of the counting violations reported so far didn't come with evidence. This is a hard lesson to learn for democracy.

However, that doesn't mean the vote counting is completely safe from scrutiny. At the time of counting, the counting progress was recorded and published live online on the official website by the Central Election Commission (CEC), the official unit in charge of all things related to elections. One guy took screen shots, roughly one in every 3 minutes, and made a slideshow out of them. There were total of 68 slides starting from 17:48 (note: the counting started at 16:00) to 21:59 (when all the counting was completed) on Jan 14th.

Since I am usually obsessed with any data of time series nature, I tried to write down the votes on each slide along with its time and total counted stations, to see how the counting proceeded. Much to my surprise, there is one abnormality that puts me in disbelief : on slides from 21:00 to 21:06, when the total counted stations remains unchanged for 6 minutes -- which means that the vote count should have been unchanged -- Tsai's votes mysteriously dropped, and Ma's increased. See the screenshots below.

The screenshots, summarized in the following table, indicate that in the official ballot counting, Tsai's votes dropped and Ma's increased when there's no new counting stations added.

Time	Tsai	Ma	Soong	Diff
21:00	6088958	6881307	369012
21:03	6088958	6881307	369012	0
21:06	6088278	6882220	369024	Tsai -680 Ma +913

It seems that the official election commission is automatically adjusting the vote counts in favor of Ma Ying-jeou in the middle of counting. The adjustment we are able to see is not large: Tsai down by 680 and Ma up by 913. But that might be an indication of something much more serious in the official counting which could have been carried through the entire course of counting. We don't know if the final result given to us is the true count or the count after such a possible systematic adjustment.

The numerous counting violations in local stations in favor of Ma as seen by many voters might not account for the winning edge of Ma's (~ 800,000 votes). However, if such an auto ballot adjustment does exist right inside the CEC, it could have more damaging effect. Comparing to potential ballot rigging on local counting stations, in which the outcome is unpredictable, a direct adjustment on the numbers in the official final steps ensures Ma's win with a predefined ratio -- a ratio large enough to exceed the maximal vote difference required by law for a recount.

Interestingly, the doubt on Ma's winning based on a predefined ratio does circulate based on different channel of info. Recall that Ma got total of 6,891,139 votes. In Taiwan, large numbers are described in shorter form on base of 10,000 (called 萬). For example, Ma's votes would be called >6 million in English, but "689 萬" in Taiwan's language. So the number "689" is meaningful.

Two days before the voting, a netter named v99999 posted on the forum of xFuture website with a definite tone of prediction of the election outcome with the number 689. I translated the content, with most of original format below:

~Please remember~689~Don't be shocked
Posted by v99999 at 2012-01-12 17:54 #

評價： 39

~Please remember ~689~ Don't be shocked

What does it represent ??

You will know it the day after tomorrow,,,There are many things that can't be learned by deduction and statistics.,,,Is it something not yet occurred?

In fact, it already occurred,,,Many people always wait till the time of seeing it to ask why.

In fact there's no "why" to it,,,It is just the way it is,,,

689

In fact, some reported that the same netter already predicted the number 689 on Jan,7th, one week before the voting.

Is it a coincident ? A prediction of powerful fortune teller ? Or, a leak from someone who knew something behind the scene ? In a followup post to the above one, v99999 claimed that he/she actually saw the number before the election. The tone in the post makes people wonder if the election outcome was already defined before the voting.

There are many other reports of potential ballot rigging. The more you heard, the more you start to doubt if the election is indeed rigged. Many people against this ballot rigging theory claim that it's impossible to rig, 'cos every party would send people to each single counting station to monitor the votes and do the vote count themselves to ensure the counting is correct.

But here is where it gets even more bizarre -- the DPP didn't send people to watch a large number of counting stations !! Many voters reported that when they went to watch the counting voluntarily, they didn't see anyone from the DPP. In as many as 1600, 2000 or even 5000 stations, according to different sources, out of the total of 14806 counting stations, the DPP didn't assign anyone to monitor and collect the vote counts.

How on earth could this have happened? The DPP has a long history of experience fighting against the KMT, a party that has long been recognized by people with vote rigging. Fighting against such a rigging-prone party, you would imagine the DPP will definitely monitor the counting closely. In fact, in the past elections, especially ones as critical as the president election, the campaign team of DPP always mobilized and trained people to watch the counting very closely to prevent the vote rigging. Why did they skip it and just let the KMT did whatever they wanted to do this time?

If there indeed was ballot rigging by Ma Ying-jeou's government and the KMT, the DPP campaign team must be seen as partly responsible, at least on the basis of negligence. There might be something more to it. My instinct tells me that someone inside the DPP didn't want to see Tsai elected. I can go on for several articles on this but we will stop here.To people interested in the DPP politics, especially how Tsai Ing-wen struggled to guide the DPP through trouble waters within different fighting forces inside the DPP, this is a topic worth of study.

Anyhow, this article is about the vote rigging of this election. Some more studies on the vote counting might reveal more of the details. Or maybe sometime in the future, some might come out with more evidence. No matter what, this election must be recorded in the history book with not just the result but all the vote counting of law violating nature.

Reference:
Summary of the 14 January 2012 Republic of China presidential election results from wiki

Party		Candidate		Votes	%
Party		Pres	V. pres	Votes	%
	KMT	Ma Ying-jeou (incumbent)	Wu Den- yih	6,891,139	51.60%
	DPP	Tsai Ing-wen	Su Jia-chyuan	6,093,578	45.63%
	PFP	James Soong Chu-yu	Lin Ruey-shiung	369,588	2.77%
Total				13,354,305	100%

Tsai will get at least 47% votes -- UDN Editorial

2012-01-02T14:24:00.000+08:00

Observers have been highly confused by polls for the upcoming 2012 presidential election --- blue media claims that Ma keeps leading by a margin around 2~8%, and pro-green media say 50-50, which will likely be translated, according to past experiences, into that Tsai's the winner by a margin as large as 10~15%.

Oddly, the United Daily News (UDN), one of the can't-be-bluer KMT propaganda-like media, published an editorial today, claiming that Tsai will get at least 47%. Their reasoning, in fact, indicated that the 47% is a bit underestimated:

The premise of this framework is that Tsai gets 47% votes. Two references support this idea:

1. Frank Hsieh got 42% in 2008, and the momentum of DPP now is stronger than the DPP in 2008, and support to Tsai is also stronger than the support to Hsieh in 2008. So Tsai's votes will go up from 42%;

2. Chen Shui-bian got 51.11% in 2004. Although it was interfered by the 319 shooting, but whichever you look at it, it shows that the DPP has the potential to get 50% support of the voters. Now the momentum of DPP is stronger than that in 2004, and Tsai is better than Chen, therefore Tsai has the potential of approaching 50%.

Based on these two references, it's convincing to argue that Tsai can get 47% of the votes.

So what's going on here ? Do they suddenly come to sense and realize that the momentum of DPP is un-ignorable this time ? How do they explain those polls they did, that Tsai was around 33% ?

Date	Tsai	Ma	Soong
Polls by UDN on 2012 President Election
2011/11/27	35	41	10
2011/12/ 3	32	39	10
2011/12/10	33	40	10
2011/12/12	35	42	10
2011/12/17	33	41	10

This editorial from the UDN seems to bn an admission that:

(1) Blue polls always underestimate green candidates by 10~15% (47-33 = 14%). But this is certainly not new. A famous pro-blue writer Nan Fang Shuo (南方朔) said in an article that :

正因為綠色群眾較不表態，懂選舉的人都知道，國民黨要贏，投票前半年，他們必須領先至少15%，投票前3個月至少要領先10%
Because green supporters are more likely not to display their voting behaviors, whoever knows about the election knows that, the KMT must lead by at least 15% and 10%, half year and 3 months before the election, respectively.

See another admission in a video by a TV commentator who is deep-dark-black blue.

(2) Green supporters DO NOT display any stronger willingness to tell the truth in polls than ever, a point what many observers ( example ) claims without support of substantial evidence. In a response to the above article cited, I wrote:

Many people claim that (that the green supporters are more willing to tell the truth in polls this year), but none can provide anything to back that up other than pure speculation. Such speculation most probably came from a sense that the green supporters are higher in moral this year, as seen in new report or TV or any campaign activities.

That sense is correct. However, converting that observation directly into green’s willingness to provide faithful answer during polls conducted by pro-blue media is a serious mistake. Many green netters I saw on forums reported how they intentionally told poll calls that they want to vote for Ma.

The blue poll center knew this very well, too. Here is a paragraph in a recent interview of the vice manager of ChinaTimes poll center, conducted by a journalist (?) from China, posted on 12/27/2012 :

【对我们来说，一般加权之后，绿营会上升，因为考虑到愿意接受中时访问的可能是蓝营较多，绿营的可能直接把电话挂了。

To us (China Times), the green support rate generally will go up after weighting. Because we considered that blue supporters are most probably more willing to take polls conducted by China Times. The green supporters might just hang up the phone.】
访中时民调

Yes they did take that into considerations and make weighting outta it. But, they refused to publicize how much adjustment they made:

【在民调数据之后要进行加权，但是加权数不会公布。
After we took the polls, the data need to be weighted, but we won’t reveal how much we adjusted 】

From all sources, “more pan-green supporters were willing to express their preferences” seems to be nothing but a rumor that many took as a fact.

In the mean time, less than 2 weeks before the voting, the xFuture has been predicting that Tsai lead Ma by 6~ 12% for 4 weeks ...

UDN's Editorial:

選宋楚瑜就是選蔡英文

【聯合報╱社論】
2012.01.02 03:10 am

有人說，「選宋楚瑜就是選蔡英文」，宋楚瑜揚言提告；然而，「選宋楚瑜就是選蔡英文」，已是昭然若揭的事實。

這是以數字推演出來的結論。一般的說法是：若以蔡英文的得票率為四十七％當做準據，則馬英九若要贏蔡英文，就至少必須得票四十八％。四十七加四十八，餘下的空間只有百分之五；也就是說，在此一架構下，宋楚瑜的得票若超過百分之五，馬必落選。

此一架構的假設前提是蔡英文得票四十七％。有兩個參考點，可以支持此項假設。一、謝長廷在二○○八得票約四十二％，而此時民進黨的氣勢勝二○○八的民進黨，此時蔡的聲勢勝二○○八的謝，因此蔡英文的得票至少可從四十二％起跳。二、陳水扁在二○○四年得票五十‧一一％，當年雖有三一九槍擊案影響，但無論如何皆顯示民進黨有得票近五十％的潛力；而此時民進黨的氣勢勝二○○四年，此時的蔡勝二○○四的扁，因此蔡的得票率亦有向五十％趨近的實力。從這兩個參數作出蔡英文得票四十七％的推論，具有說服力。

如前所述，在這個架構下，宋若得票超過五％，馬即落選。那麼，宋的得票會不會有五％呢？答案是有可能。因為，五％就是六十五萬票，若以全國一萬五千個票匭來計算，只要宋楚瑜在每一個票匭開出四十幾票，就能達到那個票數，怎謂沒有可能？

也就是說，宋要拿到五％選票，從統計的常態分布來看，是有可能的（他在二○○六台北市長選舉得票四‧一四％）；反過來說，如果宋楚瑜拿不到五％，則那種選民的表現所透露的對世局國情的深刻成熟思考，才是統計學及社會學上的異態，反而可以令人驚異不置。

此次選舉唯一可以確切預言之事，就是宋楚瑜絕對不會當選。因為，仍以蔡得票四十七％為準據，宋若要當選，須獲四十八％選票，也就是要將馬壓至五％以下；但如今宋的民調在六至七％徘徊，其看好率則在一％以下，甚至有時低至○‧一％。宋之絕對不會當選，是當然與必然之理，亦為宋楚瑜自己心知肚明之事。

此時宋能拉到的選票，絕對大多數應是泛藍的選票。因為，宋標舉的是極統觀點，不可能有泛綠選民把票投給宋；所以，宋拉到的每一張泛藍選票，都會造成使馬落選的壓力，亦將成為使蔡當選的助力。因此，選宋楚瑜就是選蔡英文，這個論點可謂理所當然，毫無疑問。

問題在於：宋楚瑜執意倒馬挺蔡，卻陷於自我矛盾之中。宋楚瑜的中心觀點仍在國憲認同與兩岸政策，他公開肯定馬的ＥＣＦＡ是「重大努力」，又公開指蔡之否定九二共識「後果嚴重」；倘若這是宋的真信仰，他卻要拉下「重大努力」的馬，而要拉上「後果嚴重」的蔡，這豈不是自相矛盾？

沒有人比宋楚瑜更知道他絕對不會當選，也很少人比宋楚瑜更知道蔡英文若當選，將在國憲認同及兩岸關係上發生的「嚴重後果」。有人問起「五％生死門」的問題，宋楚瑜說：「重要的不是五％，而是誰能不讓台灣趴下去！」但是，宋楚瑜如今正在做的事，就是要拚命拉下馬英九，將台灣綁在蔡英文的台獨戰車上，親眼目送台灣就這樣趴下去！

宋楚瑜如果有一丁點為國為民的不忍之念，即使他有千般百般的私仇私恨，也沒有理由裹惑五％的選民與他一起去製造「嚴重的後果」，「讓台灣趴下去」。宋楚瑜明明知道他自己是在摧毀國脈傷害台灣，但那些迄今仍支持他的泛藍選民，尚以為是在伸張正義救國家；那些泛藍選民難道知道：宋楚瑜現在要利用他們去做的，其實是等於要他們扶助蔡英文做中華民國總統？

選情緊繃，間不容髮。除非蔡英文可衝破五十％過半選票，或蔡英文的選票低於四十五％；否則，宋楚瑜的得票高低必定是馬英九能否當選的決定性因素。一％十三萬票，莫說五％是生死門，一％都可能決定馬蔡二人的生死。

宋楚瑜必須說明的是，「棄馬保台」難道就是他的救國方略？他說，現在如果不選了，「連人都做不成了」；但當他在一月十四日若與蔡英文共同實現了「棄馬保台」的台獨大業，莫說「人做不成」，當他揹上「汪精衛／吳三桂」的罵名，恐怕另日也無顏見他那為捍衛中華民國而浴血苦戰的亡父宋達於地下了！

非「讚」不可！歡迎加入udn粉絲團，新聞你HOLD住！
【2012/01/02 聯合報】@ http://udn.com/

全文網址: 選宋楚瑜就是選蔡英文 | 社論 | 意見評論 | 聯合新聞網 http://udn.com/NEWS/OPINION/OPI1/6818432.shtml#ixzz1iH3HmaUC

Future Market predicts: Ma falls behind by 8% and keeps falling fast

2011-12-04T11:56:00.597+08:00

Xfuture, the future market website, claimed to be more accurate than most opinion surveys conducted by media in Taiwan, is conducting surveys in the form of stock exchanges for the upcoming legislative and presidential elections. There are 3 contract groups for the president election. I am sharing the timeline of one of them, The Estimate of Vote Percentage (2012總統選舉投票率預測), for all three candidates: Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文, DPP), Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九, KMT) and James Soong (宋楚瑜, PFP). The data covers the period from 9/1/2011 to 12/2/2011 for both Tsai and Ma. Soong was not included into this contract group until 11/4/11. At the time of preparing this post (12/2), the data show a profile of Tsai : Ma : Soong = 51.0% : 37.1% : 12.5%.

The data is presented in two graphs: first the data only, allowing readers to observe the trends without the interference from my interpretation. The second one includes (1) events that might have marked the major critical changes of winning trend at specific times; (2) a projection of the trend to the election date (1/14/2012), by extrapolating the data of the last 10 days or so, to show the possible outcome if it keeps going with the current trend.

Fig.1. The estimate of vote percentage for the 2012 presidential election. Blue: Tsai Ing-wen (DPP); Red: Ma Ying-jeou (KMT); Brown: James Soong (PFP). Source: Xfuture

Fig.2. Critical Events and Projection. A. around 5% of Ma's supporters changed to Tsai in October, followed by a seemingly non-stop fall on Ma's side. B. Soong was introduced into the competition, which comes with a second wave of Ma's rapid fall; C. The war of persimmons, doubling up the speed of Ma's fall. See details in text. Also, the data in Fig.1. is extrapolated to the election date (1/14/2012) based on the current trend.It shows that Ma could fall behind Soong 10 days before the election, reaching a final percentage profile of Tsai:Soong:Ma = 50%:30%:20% --- if the current trend remains unchanged. Note: right after point C, there's a deep fall of Ma's rate. It was categorized by the Xfuture as intentional manipulation and was corrected back to the normal trend.

The data in this contract group shows that, before October, Tsai and Ma both gained ground with small but steady pace, with Ma leading by about ~10%.

In the mid to end of October, however, significant amount, about 5%, of Ma's supporters switched to Tsai in a very short time (Point A in Fig.2).

What happened in October that might have contributed to this swift change ?

On Tsai's side, she finished campaign tours all over Taiwan with overwhelming support, then heated up the campaign with the Piggie Bank Trio movement, signifying a common people's war against the KMT authority. Both could be seen as an effective way to consolidate green base and potentially brings a positive face to the election.

On Ma's side, he failed to respond to farmers' wish for the Old Farmer Subsidy (OFS). It is a tradition in Taiwan to raise the monthly OFS by NT$ 1,000 in presidential election, a tradition the DPP follows. But, Ma insists that farmers deserve only 316 dollars/month of increase this time.

It went wrong seriously in the beginning. In one of stories reported by a KMT local legislative candidate (note that the legislators will be voted on the same date as the president), when they went to the home of a long-time pro-KMT farmer to deliver the 316.00, the farmer just threw it back at them. Many others told them not to come at all.

Urgent calls like this from local KMT campaign workers were rushed to the headquarter in Taipei, repeatedly, only to meet repeating announcements from Ma's totally-out-of-touch campaign team that 316 is fair and square. It won't help at all when news about Ma's gov spent huge money in unrestrained way in other directions (see below), and raise subsidy to other groups of people who already enjoy much more monetary benefit than farmers did (see here, here and here).

Based on several sources from the KMT side, this arrogant blunder costs Ma somewhere around 3~10% votes. With each 1% equates to about 150,000 votes, Ma lost 450k ~ 1500k votes with this single blunder alone.

But Ma didn't stop there. In the press conference when he formally announced his "Golden 10 year" plan (黃金十年), supposedly to be a campaign-boosting ingredient, he rushed to include his plan of a peace agreement with the the communist China (see Frozen Garlic's comment for why Ma shouldn't have done so). It was a plan that he furiously denied 2 months ago when his campaign manager King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) -- allegedly the real powerful man-behind-the-scene who makes decisions for Ma to follow -- announced the peace talk in a trip to the USA. Besides, it was originally not in Ma's golden 10 years plan -- at least not to anybody's knowledge. Nobody in the entire Blue camp seemed to have any prior knowledge of it -- the KMT heavy heads, the KMT campaigners, the KMT legislators ... until Ma suddenly announced it in that press conference.

Stunned in an unimaginable manner, people from all camps threw in heavy criticism. In response, Ma's office delivered another rushed announcement in the midnight the same day --- that the peace agreement WILL be pre-approved by a referendum. But, in less than 12 hours, Ma followed it with another rushed flip-flop by saying that the referendum is just one of the means to get public opinions on the peace agreement.

Tsai responded with an approach like, "fine, lets get on with the referendum law, then."(my wording) The next Monday, the DPP law makers sent in the proposal to the Legislative Yuan. The KMT rejected it.

Ma's plan of peace agreement was thus finished and moved to the trash in less than 10 days -- along with his supposedly boosting Golden 10 Years Plan. What is left is the deep scars on Ma's image.

All the above events exploded in October, corresponding to the onset of rapid falling seen in the graph presented here. Note that the trend of falling continued, albeit in a slower rate, even before Soong was included in the contract (Point B), which sped up the gap increase between Tsai and Ma.

It was followed by even more catastrophic events (not marked on the graph) on Ma's side along the track, including the humongous spending on a musical "Dreamers" (夢想家) that was staged only twice. The contract was given to a small group of artists who are allegedly close to Ma's wife, and is the same group of people who also took several multi-million art contracts from the government after Ma took power. A large portion of government's budget for artists flow into the hands of the same group of people like fountain water. The money given to Dreamers alone equates to 50% of the yearly funding for artists.

Ma said he ""felt sorry" for how the gov money was spent. Ma's campaign companion, Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), said that he did not know the show had such a high budget and that he regretted the money was spent in that way. However, a pro-KMT commentator revealed that Ma and Wu were actually who approved the spending in a meeting. The guy who "resigned to stop the bleeding", Council for Cultural Affairs Minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁), is but a scapegoat.

With other bad (or good) news like the revelation of Ma's link to a bookie in suspicion of manipulating the election outcome, we went on to the "War of Persimmons" , by which Pro-KMT polls all said that Ma regained the lead after this by as much as 8~10%. But the data shown here (point C) indicated that Ma actually suffered even more.

In review, Ma's fall could be roughly dissected into 3 stages:

1. In October, Tsai gained ground with campaign tours, Piggie Bank Trio, etc, and Ma lost ground with OFS, the peace talk, etc --- contributed by: Tsai, Ma

2. In mid Nov, Ma went down with Soong's entry as well as Ma's Dreamers Musical and his links to bookie --- contributed by: Soong, Ma

3. In end of Nov, Ma went further down after the persimmon price debate --- contributed by: Ma

In summary, the falling of Ma is due to 3 factors: Tsai, Soong, and Ma. Among them, Ma contributed to his own fall in much larger magnitude. That is, Ma is the one who puts his own re-election in jeopardy.

This is something we have to bear in mind, 'cos, if Ma loses, many pro-KMT media, as well as many foreign media that is really foreign, are going to blame Soong for Ma's loss, while in fact Ma's his own worst nightmare.

The extrapolation of the trend presents a possible scenario that Ma's rating could fall behind Soong's in around 10 days before the election, reaching a final result of Tsai:Ma:Soong = 50%:20%:30%. Certainly, if only the trend is kept, which may not be likely.

No matter what, 40 days before the election, there's just no sign that Ma could ever recover from his downfall trend. Seeing how many screwup moves contributed by Ma and his people, Ma might be better off not campaigning at all.

More ref:

See XFuture's own report on the same data set:
未來事件交易所目前對2012年總統選舉預測-蔡英文擴大領先馬英九8%、宋楚瑜上升到12%_20111202 http://nccupm.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/1429/

The Shutting Down of a Reputable Poll Center

2011-10-14T13:49:00.005+08:00

A quick response to Michael's blog about the sudden shutdown of Global Views' (遠見) poll center. I don't have time to gather references like I usually did, so bare with me.

The following is some background info that might be helpful to understand the context behind what's going on:

1. Back in 2000 when there were 3-way campaign for the president: KMT Lien (連戰), PFP Soong (宋楚瑜), and DPP Chen (陳水扁) -- that is, 2 blue and 1 green, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), then Lien's campaign manager(?), announced a poll result right before the voting day, saying that Lien already won over Soong in polls by a large margin, asking blue supporters to focus their votes on Lien but not waste it on Soong.

The election result was that Soong lost to Chen by only a small margin, but Lien's votes were barely half of Soong's, making Chen the president. If Ma didn't announce that poll to tell people Lien already won huge in polls, most likely Soong would have taken more votes than Chen did, and the blue would never have lost the government to the green.

That is, Ma is not only the critical reason for Soong to lose the president race in 2000, he is also the grandfather of "fabricating polls."

Because of Ma's behavior, Taiwan passed a law to forbid poll announcements one week before any election.

2. Starting from May this year, the numbers of polls conducted by pro-KMT media were abnormally high. They run like a poll every two or three days. It feels like that the entire news field is flooded with polls intentionally;

3. The poll center of the Global Views was established by the director Mr. Dai (戴立安) several years ago. GV's polls is considered somewhat more neutral and objective in Taiwan;

4. Every poll has to be weighted based on the distribution of gender, age, etc. The GV used to publish the weighted polls. But starting from May this year, they started publishing only rough data (which always show Ma won), and hide the weighted result behind a pay program. Users have to pay to peek into the real result. The GV warned to sue anyone who publishes the real result;

5. According to words accidentally slipped out of people's mouth, DPP's candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) probably (note: I put this word to protect myself) won over Ma by a margin of ~7% in the GV's real result. This result is very different from ALL OTHER pro-KMT polls (they all say Ma won; some polls say Ma won by more than 10%);

6. Not long ago, the GV announced that they will put more effort to bring the race to the people by conducting more more reliable polls on the president race, starting from October;

7. Then suddenly, without any sign, the GV shuts down their political poll center. Mr. Dai (戴立安) resigned, giving up the entire polling model he established and maintained. Some sources said he might be forced to leave;

8. In an interview, Dai said that Tsai won Ma by 4~6%;

So, now, here we are. Now all those pro-KMT polls can publish any result they want -- just like Ma Ying-jeou the Grandfather of False Polls did in 2000 -- without any other poll standing in their way.

#1. Global Views Shuts Down Polling! =UPDATED=
http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2011/10/global-views-shuts-down-polling.html

Large scale hacks to Tsai's office appears to come from China and Ma government

2011-08-10T04:04:00.002+08:00

The computers in the Tsai Ing-wen's campaign headquarters were found to be hacked last Saturday.

The report (in Chinese) says that the hacks are in the form of Trojan horse, aiming at info stealing but not destruction. The headquarter was not aware of it until a "falsified Chairperson's schedule" was circulated among the headquarter personnel. The person responsible for the circulation had no idea where it was from.

Tsai is both the president candidate and the chairperson of DPP's. Her office holds all the info regarding how the DPP had planned and is planning to campaign for the president and legislator elections early next year, including how to deploy the resources, who is gonna take charge of what, etc.

All these info were stolen, alone with critical private info like user names, passwords, etc, of the headquarter personnel's.

The report didn't mention how long the stealing had been going on. A Trojan horse type of hack usually stays in the victim computer for a long time while gathering info. It's likely that the DPP has been operating like an open book for a long time in the eyes of her opponents.

The DPP had the ip's traced, and found that the hacks came from 3 sources:

1. China's national Xinhua News Agency (XNA);
2. Individual hackers;
3. Some "special group" inside Taiwan;

The XNA denied any involvement. But the investigation reveals attacks came from the XNA in Beijing and going through the XNA branch in Malaysia.

The 3rd group is revealed to be from the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, an office in Executive Yuan (RDEC, 行政院研考會) of the Ma Ying-jeou government.

There's no comment from Ma government so far. The DPP said they don't want to speculate anything now.

They do complain about the reluctance of the police in pursuing this case. A police office was quoted as saying, "don't pull the trigger only because you see a shadow," when he/she was asked to investigate.

This is not the first time the police plays dormant to threats against the DPP. ~~Two~~ Three months ago, a facebook user publicly call for assassinating Tsai. The police claimed they will investigate.

There were several online assassinating calls against Ma Ying-jeou in the past. Each of them was dealt with in a lightning pace --- whoever made that claim was caught by the police the same or the next day.

But when the target was Tsai, it's a different story. ~~Two~~ Three months from the date the police claims to investigate, the one calling for killing Tsai is still at large now. ~~There's no sign if the police intends to catch this guy.~~ Update: for the assassination call on the Facebook, the police says that they've asked the Facebook in USA to provide the user info but to no avail. They say they will keep trying.

More on the speech freedom case of a food blogger

2011-07-03T15:25:00.002+08:00

More than a week after the news -- blogger Liu posted a negative comment about a restaurant and received a fine of ~7,000 US$ plus 30-day detention with 2-year probation -- more info collected makes things look clearer. Liu's original post and the verdicts from both the first and the second trials (all in Chinese) can be found in [1].

There are many blog posts in the English blogsphere commented about this. Among them MKL's post [2] is probably the most popular one. But there are lots of holes need to be patched in his article. Earlier in my blog, I posted a comment [3] about his work, "But when one wrote an article containing lots of unchecked and misleading info, and in that same article spent considerable focus to criticize others those same mistakes, it does look funny to me." The following is a further exploration of that view, with additional details into the case.

I felt funny 'cos in MKL's article, I was among the ones he criticized for

"of course most of the English speaking blogosphere in Taiwan is abuzz and appalled and whatnot (without even reading the original text in Chinese), the so often linked Taipei Times headline was enough for them to pass a quick judgement"

even though my post he linked to was based on a Chinese-language (the Liberty Times). In fact, I didn't even know TT reported it at that time.

It was followed with "I did a better job than others"-style of criticism with statements of having translation helps to make the case analysis in his blog better than others. The funny feeling continued, considering that I has spoken/written in Chinese all life long.

But this is just a personal feeling. It is certain that being able to read/write Chinese doesn't guarantee what I read/write is absolutely correct. This also applies to whatever translation MKL got. I've commented in MKL's blog (on June 27th) on a very crucial error of his article - that is, on the insanitary condition of the restaurant - a comment MKL seems to overlook. With the help of translation, MKL concluded,

"Colleague's testimony in court exposed her as a lier, but the most important thing, that lead to her conviction were her unsubstantiated claims about the sanitary condition"

That is a very serious accusation without ground. I don't know what went wrong -- imprecise translation? miscommunication between MKL and the translator? Or MKL didn't put the translation into the article correctly?

Reading through the court documents [1], what we can say about the witness' testimony, at most, is that her claims (talking about something she heard two years ago) are inconsistent with the claims from the accused. And when statements from witness and from the accused are inconsistent, the judge proceeded with a logic like this (note: this is not a translation):

If what the witness said is correct, then what the accused said is wrong. Therefore, it's obvious that the accused said is wrong. (「被告說她有去吃過，說那裡覺得比較髒一點，吃起來覺得還好」等語，如被告確曾對證人提及上開言詞，則比對被告張貼於網路所使用之文字：「很難吃、不衛生、有蟑螂」等字眼，已足見前後兩者有極明顯之差異。)

I believe readers can easily spot the false logic.

The judge then continued with that the reason the accused said inconsistent things is because that she wanted to ruin the restaurant's business.
(而被告會有此等明顯差異之不同評論，固然是因生氣之故，惟其因此而於網路登載張貼上開系爭文字，依一般經驗法則，誠難謂無針對告訴人之味到小吃店生意，並具有欲減損告訴人信譽之故意甚明。)

That's quite a stretch, from my point of view.

The witness also said,

"(Yes I heard people said that) it was insanitary. The accused and other colleagues said so." (不衛生是有，被告及我其他另外的同事都有講過)

"Three other colleague also said that the restaurant was a bit insanitary" (我另外三個同事有說過那裡環境比較髒一點)

which the judge didn't seem to take into account. Why only took part of her testimony that is against the accused, but skipped the part that favoring her?

Furthermore, in the appeal court, the accused stated in writing that,

"other bloggers also wrote about the insanitary conditions of the restaurant." (其他網路部落格評論該小吃店髒亂)

It seems that the judge ignored that, too.

The photos taken (probably during the investigation) also shows insanitary conditions (從照片看得出來，他們店到現在還是一樣不衛生) and bottle(s) of cockroach killer (嗣後取得之該店不衛生現場照片與現場擺放殺蟑劑之照片，足見伊所述情節客觀上尚非全然無據). Both are consistent with the descriptions from others that the restaurant was insanitary.

Readers are welcome to read or skip to near the end of this article to see witness' detailed description and picture for yourself being there.

Some readers might also notice in Liu's original blog article,

"I didn't write (about the restaurant) in my food review before, because the restaurant is insanitary and the food is terrible."
(之前我的網誌食記沒寫...就是因為很難吃又不衛生)

which implies that she is a food reviewer who doesn't want to write about -- let alone to ruin -- a restaurant over insanitary condition and/or terrible food.

Based on all info above, it would be more reasonable to assume that the restaurant had been insanitary since two years ago and most probably up to the time of investigation. It would mean that the accused were telling the truth and that the judge made an illogical ruling.

But even if we take the judge's words for granted, nowhere in both verdicts did the law say the accused is a lair. The witness didn't say that, the judge didn't say that. The most serious accusation from the judge is "obviously inconsistent," which, as described above, is based on a false logic.

Therefore, MKL's claim that "Colleague's testimony in court exposed her as a lair" took one step forward from a questionable ruling onto the direction of distortion, thus wrongfully paints a dark judgment on the accused. The fact people calling her "crazy woman" - listed in MKL's blog - is very minor and is irrelevant to the case. By adding that to his highlighted list, it helps to plant a seed in reader's minds that the accused is bad.

Taking into account of MKL's original questioning on "the ruling was given in Feb but why reported now" (it was corrected later after my comment), the case was presented with incorrect info and wrongful accusations, most serious being the one calling her a lair without researching what the truth is (even after I pointed it out). It seems to me that the article was written with a predetermined objective to set the accused on the wrong side from the very beginning.

There are couple of other minor errors, with my highlights:

~~ She claimed that the owner and a customer repeatedly called her "crazy old woman"

-- The Precise translation should have been "Crazy woman". The term "瘋婆子" doesn't necessarily target at "old woman," especially in emotional dispute. (The court document shows that the original wording was "肖查某")

~~ "She then noted in her post, that "of course she wasn't bothered by the car, but she doesn't like people, who make the traffic worse in the neighborhood."

-- No, man. This translation of Liu's article is not correct. What Liu wrote was that "although he didn't obstruct me, but (he) obstructed the public traffic" (雖然他沒妨礙到我..但妨礙到大家的交通). From the tone of entire article, it is clear that she was "deeply bothered." In fact, she mentioned "Although I am mining other's business ... but ... I just couldn't leave it alone" (我這樣雖然多事..但是..就是看不慣), which showed that she was "bothered" to no end.

~~ "the story is out now, because she appealed the verdict, but the judge did not reverse his original ruling"

-- To my knowledge, an appellant court is always ruled by a different judge. So there shouldn't be "his original ruling." What's the point of having the same judge, anyway? To admit that his original ruling is wrong?

~~ "A regular customer of that shop found the post she wrote and told it to the owner, who then decided to sue her for defamation."

--- The owner sued her for "Against the Reputation,"(妨害名譽) but not "defamation."(毀謗) But it's very hard to distinguish the two. The judge did apply charges based on a crime of "defamation", which made it more confusing.

~~ "The judge sentenced her to a 30 days detention, which were changed to 2 years probation and a heavy fine of 200.000 NTD"

-- The judge didn't fine her 200,000 NTD (there's a typo in the decimal point). The fine was 500,000.00 NTD. But the accused and the complainant reached an agreement of 200,000.00 NTD before the 2nd court ruling.

~~ "Michael Turnton does the same and adds his famous sarcasm."

-- As one commenter pointed out, the name Turton was spelled wrong.

It's always encouraging to see a writer try to do some good. In this sense, MKL does have the spirit. Unfortunately, doing a half-baked research with distortion and claiming it "this is what really happened" doesn't really sound right. I guess it made the article more "sensational," especially when the article also criticizes other bloggers for not doing the same kind of research the author did. The fact that the article has to be kept revising, but still leaving quite a few errors and also leading readers into a wrong direction, speaks for itself about how well the research was done.

Other things about the case that we know now:

~~ This is not a case due to Ms Liu writing a "bad food review." It is clear that her blog article in question is not a food review. This is where MKL's effort made a positive contribution to the story;

~~ During the questioning in court, the complainant, Yang, who sued the accused, was listed as a witness,

"The above facts are witnessed and described by the witness, i.e., the complainant Yang, and Chen (Note: Yang's daughter) and others in details during the investigation"
(上揭事實，業經證人即告訴人楊穗嬌、陳姿安等分別於警詢及偵查中證述甚詳)

Can you do that ? Go sue someone and play the role of witness in court ? I feel very uncomfortable. And scary, too.

~~ From the judge's statement quoted above, it sounds like the judge already determined what facts were before the witness' testimony was taken into consideration.

~~ Note that the testimony of the second witness, Chen, was very evasive. She dodged every question the judge asked, so her testimony is useless (when asked if the store looked dirty, she answered she just went in to eat, so she didn't notice the environment; when asked if the food tastes bad, she said she didn't order the restaurant special so she can't say)

~~ Below are what in Liu's blog that got her into trouble and the judgment made by the court :

1. Bully -She called the restaurant (owner) bully (惡霸). The judge's ruling on this:

"Because so angry, (the accused) used the internet to attack the restaurant, i.e, the complainant, with extremely negative emotional term "bully". It is therefore obvious that it's difficult to say (the accused) didn't intend to ruin the restaurant's reputation.
(因氣不過即透過網路使用形容他人為「惡霸」等極負面且激烈之情緒用語攻詰味到小吃店即告訴人，是其主觀上顯難謂無影響告訴人即味到小吃店名譽之故意甚明。)

Bear with me on the awkward structure of the 2nd sentence. It is a direct translation of what the judge said, which by itself is very difficult to read.The point is, saying the term "bully" is "extremely negative emotional" seems quite a stretch to me.

2. Insanitary (很髒) -- as I mentioned earlier in this article, the judge didn't seem to take into account of other statements that are consistent with Liu's "insanitary" description.

3. Cockroach (蟑螂) -- Liu wrote that she saw (a) cockroach, which she didn't and couldn't prove.

However, cockroaches usually don't pose for photo shot. Besides, an insanitary environment is usually a breeding place for cockroaches, especially when it is greasy and warm and dark (cockroaches are "photophobic" -- they are afraid of light), it almost guarantees that someone will find cockroaches somewhere sometime.

Knowing that, and check back on the witness testimony in details about the restaurant condition,

"The first time I went, it was at lunch time. After I ordered and went in to find a seat, it was dim and dark, and the tables were a bit dirty. Therefore I went outside, where they cooked the noodle. It was brighter there. What I felt at that time was, the tables were a bit greasy."
(我第一次去吃的時候，是中午的時候，剛點完餐要進去裡面找位子的時候，裡面就是昏昏暗暗的，桌子有點髒，所以我想到外面煮麵的地方去吃，因為那裡有採光罩，看起來比較亮一點，所以我想就在外面吃。當時我看的感覺，覺得桌面比較有油漬)

"The second time I went there with a colleague, I didn't went in. Because it was at night, we ordered to-go and took it back to our company. At that time the condition of the store looked the same as what I saw in the first time, the floor looked dirty and it was dark inside"
(第二次我是跟另外一名同事去點餐，但我並沒有進去裡面吃，因為那是在晚上，我們是去他們店裡點完餐，請他們端到公司去吃，那時候我感覺到店裡的環境跟上述一樣，看起來地板髒髒的，裡面看起來昏昏暗暗的)

The judge asked, that the tables looked dirty, is it because of grease ? Witness: "Yes, and looked old, too."

The judge asked if it looked clean after wiping. Witness: "If it was insanitary simply because of dirty tables, then wiping will clean it. But other than the tables felt dirty and greasy, the floor, the wall, and the light all felt the same."
(如果單純是桌子髒，擦一擦就會乾淨，但是感覺除了桌子油膩髒髒的以外，還有地板、牆壁、燈光等也一樣)

"*the kitchen of the restaurant was outdoor. Where they prepared food and cook dishes, as well as the plates, the utensils etc etc, all made me feel a bit insanitary"
(因為味到小吃店煮東西的地方在外面，煮東西的地方包括切菜的地方，還有餐盤、餐具擺設等等，給我的感覺都是覺得有點髒)

The witness didn't see a cockroach. But the restaurant condition described by her is a heaven for cockroaches. It wouldn't be a surprise that some customers see a cockroach or two there.

4. Hard to eat (很難吃)-- Liu wrote that the food was terrible. The judgment:

"Even if the accused thinks that the "dry noodle"(or "noodle w/ soybean paste") is too salty, she should have written that concretely, then she can argue she was with good intention and her writing is appropriate. It is hard to determine that her writing that the dish was terrible was with good intention when she's been there only once and felt that the "dry noodle"(or "noodle w/ soybean paste") was too salty."
(被告縱使認為「味到小吃川味牛肉麵」店之乾麵（或是炸醬麵）很鹹，亦應僅就此情具體評論，才屬適當及善意之評論。其僅一次消費並覺得乾麵（或是炸醬麵）很鹹，即為「味到小吃川味牛肉麵」店很難吃之傳述，自難認定係適當及善意之評論。)

Didn't we say that the accused did not write a food review ? The judgment would have made more sense if the accused did write one.

We knew that the accused wrote something to express her anger. But, there's some long distance between "expressing anger" and "intending to ruin the business."

~~ For those 4 terms, the judge ruled that the accused committed two crimes: Affront and Aggravated Defamation.

Lastly, even I've done so much to try to clear the case, I have to admit that it couldn't be the whole thing, for what I present here is "logic deduction," but not "legal deduction," such as "what behavior offends which article of law." I don't have enough legal knowledge to opine on that part of judge's ruling (blogger JustRecently might have a take on this [4]).

At this moment, I would say that this case is about an article, expressing author's anger, being stretched to a malicious intention of ruining others business, and harsh punishment was applied accordingly.

References:

[1] 台中劉姓部落格作者因言論被判刑的相關文件 / Echo
http://tw-i-light.blogspot.com/2011/06/blog-post_27.html

[2] Taiwanese blogger jailed over critical restaurant review in Taichung / MKL
http://mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com/2011/06/taiwanese-blogger-jailed-restaurant.html

[3] Wrote negative comments on food in Taiwan and get heavy punishment /Echo
http://echotaiwan.blogspot.com/2011/06/wrote-negative-comments-on-food-in.html

[4] Freedom of Expression vs Protection of Reputation / JustRecently
http://justrecently.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/freedom-of-expression-vs-protection-of-reputation/#comment-18200

Other earlier posts:
-- http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2011/06/landmark-free-speech-ruling.html
-- http://ozsoapbox.com/taiwan/food/taiwan-jails-food-blogger-over-salty-noodles-review/
-- http://thewritingbaron.com/and-throw-away-the-key
-- http://laorencha.blogspot.com/2011/06/holy-crap.html

Wrote negative comments on food in Taiwan and get heavy punishment

2011-06-22T12:47:00.007+08:00

[update] See my newer article with more updated info of this event.

Didn't write anything for a long while (I spent most of my time on Black Rain's blog). But I think I should bring this to your attentions, regarding what you write in your blog that could get you into troubles in Taiwan.

It appears in today's news:

部落客惡評麵店賠20萬判拘役
Blogger Maliciously Comments on Noodle, Fined NT$ 200,000 and More
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2011/new/jun/22/today-t1.htm

A blogger ordered a noodle in a restaurant. She then wrote an article in her blog to criticize --- ~~too salty,~~ the store too dirty, had cockroaches, the owner allows illegal parking causing traffic troubles --- as what any customer in the USA would write on a daily basis.

Only thing is that she was not in the USA. The restaurant brought it to the court and she was fined by the judge with:

* ~~~7000.00 US dollars (The owner asked for ~17,000.00).~~ Fined ~ US$ 17,000.00 in the first trial (on Feb 15th). The accused reached an agreement with the complainant for ~ US$ 7,000.00 before the 2nd trial.
* delivering an apology
* 30-day labor
* 2-year probation.
* 30-day detention, probated for 2 years.

Why ?

1. The investigators went to the restaurant but found that the store was clean and no cockroaches so what the blogger wrote was wrong --- Oh yea, it was after the owner brought it to the court, and the investigators expected the store be left dirty and the cockroaches be there to greet them when they got there;

2. The judge said, she went to the restaurant only once and took only one bowl of noodle. For that, she cannot say the food from the store is bad --- i.e., she should have been there numerous times and eaten all the dishes before she made any negative comment;

3. The fact that she wrote a negative comment after eating there only once shows that her intention of writing that blog article was to ruin the reputation of the restaurant.

With that, the judge concluded that what she wrote is beyond the freedom of speech, and charged her with Offenses Against Reputation (妨害名譽) accordingly.

Even if that crime sticks, the punishment is way too heavy from my standard.

The article also cited a remarkable comment from a lawyer as saying:

"When making comments, people should hold an objective and fair attitude, but not just criticizing. After all, everybody has different tastes, so you can't make one comment for all."

That is, you are not allowed to voice your own judgment. Instead, you should always voice "what everybody thinks."

So, watch out what you write in Taiwan, people.

Tsai Ing-wen for 2012

2011-03-11T13:33:00.003+08:00

After revealing her intention of running for the president two days ago (3/9), DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) delivered a speech, titled "I heard Taiwan's voices - Tsai Ing-wen for the DPP presidential primary" in a press conference today to make the formal announcement, becoming the 2nd to roll into the race - after former VP Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).

It probably took many by surprise, cos judging from the behaviors of all potential runners in the past, people might expect that Su Tseng-Chang (蘇貞昌) would have made his announcement before Tsai did. Su managed to put himself into the spotlight again and again with activities one after another - music concert, book publishing, photo exhibition, etc, since his a-bit-embarrassing loss in Taipei mayor election last year (Nov, 2010) -- an election in which he behaved in a not-very-glorious manner of total disregard on the power and responsibility structure of the DPP. Not following the nomination process, he made a public announcement of his intention to run for the Taipei mayor at a time of turmoil when the DPP was suffering the possibilities of splitting and losing in the two southern cities, Tainan and in Kaohsiung. His move forced Tsai and the nomination team of the DPP to face a choice of either accepting his term unconditionally, or suffering a storm of yet another splitting on the north if they opted to pick a candidate of their choice to run for Taipei (not Su) by following the nomination rule. That wasn't really a choice for the DPP, 'cos they couldn't possibly afford to having another splitting impact. As a result, Tsai and the nomination team were forced to bend the rule for Su. Su's move was considered a power-grabbing one, made at the cost of his own party and comrades having to give away their power of determining candidates. Since Su wasn't in any party staff or official, it became that he took the power that was not followed by responsibilities. It apparently angered many green supporters.

With that inglorious history, as well as some very questionable moves he made in the past, it's natural for people to expect him to behave the same way to make an early announcement.

But the DPP's president candidate is to be decided solely by public opinion polls in which Su doesn't seem to get an edge, albeit the continuous effort of the Liberty Times to promote him by (systematically) filtering out positive news about Tsai Ing-wen -- sometimes you have to go to the pro-blue media, or even China Review News, to see important news about Tsai. Last week, when reporting an article of aiming at criticizing Tsai and promoting Su, the Liberty Times deleted a sentence, "(Su) himself voluntarily told DPP legislators that his support in polls was advancing" (告知自己民調逐步攀升的訊息), which (accidentally) revealed the secret of whom might have been behind a recently circulated rumor that Su was leading in DPP's internal polls (the DPP denied any internal poll was ever conducted). It doesn't look good for Su. The LT reported everything else (criticizing Tsai and promoting Su), but this sentence was deleted. Other media - if they do report it - reported that sentence faithfully. The most recent filtering of Tsai's news was a speech, titled "Dynamic new world - the young generations and the future" (變動中的新世界-青年世代與未來), given by Tsai to university students. The speech is an important one to show Tsai's vision on future generations and is a prelude of her speech today. It can be found in many media but not the LT.

And these are just a few of many many examples. The LT has been criticized to operate like Su's personal advocating organ ever since the infighting between Hsieh and Su for the previous presidential primary way back in 2007. For its bravery of continuous flattering Su albeit years of complaints, the LT (自由時報) has earned itself a nickname "自由蘇報", where 蘇 stands for Su.

So it makes no surprise that the LT continues its tradition of blowing Su's popularity out of proportion, which would mislead its readers into believing that Su is in the lead. But all that efforts don't seem to make a significant achievement this time. The following are some quick pointers of support rates (in percentage) between Tsai and Su:

Date	Tsai	Su	Host	Type*	Stance^
1/21	23%	25%	TVBS	Calls	blue/red
1/21	37%	38%	TVBS	Calls/Comp	blue/red
2/12	81%	5%	Black Rain blog	Online	green~blue
2/24	42%	23%	Apple Daily	Calls	green~blue
2/25	73%	13%	Boss Talk	Call-in	Deep Green
3/1	37%	39%	TVBS	Calls/Comp	blue/red
3/1	65%	31%	Future Market	Market	green~blue
3/8	69%	30.6%	Future Market	Market	green~blue
3/9	73%	25.5%	Future Market	Market	green~blue #
3/10	31%	31%	udn.com	Calls/Comp	blue/red
3/11	77%	19.5%	Future Market	Market	green~blue @

* Comp in Type: means the data was collected as a comparison against Ma Ying-jeou; ^ "Stance" on the right column displays my opinion on which political stance each host holds. green=pro-Taiwan; blue=pro-China; red=China (note: some consider the "Black Rain Blog" deep-green); # collected from the Future Market website about 12~16 hrs after Tsai's running intent was reported, showing that the gap between Tsai and Su was enlarged significantly; @ collected 2 hrs after Tsai's announcement speech, with even bigger gap. Now Su's support drops down to about 1/4 of Tsai's.

One thing noteworthy is that the only host media reporting Su is barely winning over Tsai is TVBS, which aligns very well with the "promoting Su, denouncing Tsai" phenomena seen in the blue camp. All the other available data - except that of udn, which happens to be a pro-blue media - shows that not only is Su losing to Tsai, but also he is losing big. At best, Su can only get half of what Tsai has. The report (on 3/8) of Tsai intents to run boosted Tsai's support by 4% and lowerer Su's by 5.1% (a 9.1% gap), and the formal announcement today (3/11) put another 10% gap between them, making Su's support barely higher than 1/4 of Tsai's.

Not only so. Even before Tsai expressed her intent, there are groups of different stances formally expressed their endorsement on Tsai: domestic and oversea scholars and researchers, WUFI, students and The Formosan Statehood Movement. I haven't seen any group come out to endorse Su.

With the huge odds against him, Su's only chance is to "bypass the game rule" again, by pushing a coordination process in which a consensus might be reached in a closed door manner, with the endorsements from several DPP old guards who are supporting him and/or against Tsai.

He first made a move to have a so-called secret meeting - a secret meeting that was all over the news immediately - to initiate a talk with Tsai, such that "Su is the one who is seeking consolidation but not friction."

About a week later (3/6), a more formal meeting, consisting of all those important DPP big heads, was held. It was said that a consensus was reached -- on the sense of the necessity of consolidation, but not the sense of who should be the one.

Tsai's sudden announcement came two days after that meeting. Something probably happened - or should have but did not - during that meeting, pushing Tsai to think that it's the right time for her to come out. One explanation is that those old guards in the DPP attempted to enforce a "Tsai-Su" pair or even "Su-Tsai" pair, bypassing the polls entirely. The attempt might have been sensed by Tsai, and a quick decision to announce her campaign was needed to stop the manifestation of that attempt.

There's another explanation that Tsai has got everything set in the party, in such a way that if she leaves the chair position now, the party could move forward smoothly for the future duties.

Tsai will take a leave from the chairperson post. It was originally circulated that Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) could be assigned the acting chairperson to perform the party duty. Hsieh has done an excellent job organizing the campaign for the DPP in Taichung last year during the Five-City election, and has maintained good relationship with Tsai and her team. Surprisingly, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) was picked as the acting chairperson instead. It was said that Tsai wants to avoid the impression of a Tsai-Hsieh alliance that could potentially intensify the conflict of sector fighting inside the DPP.

Tsai has already organized part of her campaign team, some were party staff, resigned from their posts to follow her. It fits well with her style -- everything thoroughly thought and well planned before making a move.

In the mean time, a Central Standing Committee meeting held on Wednesday (3/9/2011) decided to assign 5 people as members of Polling Committee (民意調查委員會) to operate the upcoming polls for nomination of candidates.

The committee will decide 5 organizations on 4/25 to carry out the polls for the president primary, with 3000 valid samples in each poll. The primary process is scheduled as follows:

3/17: announcement of primary process
3/21~3/25: registration
3/31~4/22: speeches for each runner
4/25~4/29: polls
5/4: announcement of presidential candidate

Tsai Ing-wen is now the focus of both support and defaming

2011-03-01T14:18:00.001+08:00

There have been quite event-packed lately, especially on the DPP side. A lot of debates about the nomination processes of the 2012 legislator and president elections, a lot of noises about who should be the president and vice president candidates, followed by moves made by all potential ones -- Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) announced "Constitutions with different interpretations" (憲法各表), Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) announced his new book 超越瞬間 (means "Surpass the Instance") and "Taiwan Consensus" (台灣共識); Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) announced the establishment of two DPP's think tanks (Security and Strategy Research Center 安全與戰略研究中心 and Economic and Social Affairs Research Center 經濟與社會研究中心) , and her view on Taiwan's future (和而不同); Former VP Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), too, extended her own think tank to include a China research division, and after weeks of attacking Tsai in very sarcastic manners - even compared Tsai to Chiang Kai-shih and Hitler -- announced her intention of running for the president, which is followed immediately by an anti-Lu-running-for-president facebook group established by facebookers. Supporters of Su coined a story that a DPP internal poll says Su has a higher support than Tsai has, followed by a rebuke that the DPP has done no internal poll so far. At the mean time, endorsements for Tsai to run for the president seat are coming out one after another from different groups (note that she hasn't expressed intention to run yet): scholars, students, WUFI (台獨聯盟) and The Formosa Statehood Movement (建州派)。Among all these, Su went to talk with Tsai for an hour in a supposedly "secret" meeting, allegedly talked about the presidency candidate race, but Tsai denied.

With so many election-related activities on the DPP side going on within just a short couple of weeks -- many could be critical enough to steel the direction of history in some way -- it is a bit surprise when blogger Frozen Garlic -- a researcher in the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica -- said in his most recent post yesterday that nothing significant on the DPP side in the past 2 and half months --- while he did talk about what happened on the KMT side - like Ma will be the man and speaker Wang has no chance, etc, which is indeed "nothing significant". It continues with:

Tsai is probably ahead now, but I think she damaged herself by overplaying her hand in the battle for the nominations process. The DPP will have its presidential nomination in late April. (Why the rush? The election isn’t for another 11 months. Of course, as the leader, Tsai wants this decision made as soon as possible before anything happens to change the race.)

There indeed are arguments saying that deciding the DPP president candidate earlier would favor Tsai. But as far as I know, Tsai didn't express what she wants on this. In fact, whoever pays attention to Taiwan politics would have known that Tsai has always been tight-lipped on everything. It would be out-of-character for Tsai to express a self-favoring statement like that. It makes me wonder if Forzen Garlic's statement is substantiated by facts, or it is a biased impression expressed as a fact.

But real surprise came when DPP's nomination processes were distorted to vilify Tsai:

Tsai also got her way in the legislative nominations. She wanted the district nominations to be decided by telephone survey, with no party member voting component, and she wanted the party chair (herself!) to completely decide the party list. The latter, especially, is where I think she went a bit too far.

This is entirely wrong. The "telephone survey without party member involvement" was decided by the majority of central committee, not by Tsai. It was then passed in DPP's National congress with landslide majority. And the the party list of candidates will be decided through free registration of whoever interested and then coordination. Only if the coordination fails, then the phone survey will step in (see here).

That is, in nowhere is Tsai authorized with the power of determining any candidate, let alone "completely deciding the party list." It is obvious that either Frozen Garlic is unaware of what he was talking about, or he simply came up with an untrue story to put blame on Tsai.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the DPP announced that it would forgo any nomination process in “difficult” districts, and the party would simply draft candidates for these districts. The problem is that their definition of “difficult” is so broad that it encompasses 40 of the 73 districts. In some of these, the DPP should probably be favored to win. This is ridiculous and simply a clear power grab. So much for the institutionalization of the rules of competition.

The draft process he described can be found here. He forgot to tell readers (or maybe he didn't know) that the draft in each difficult district will be carried out by DPP's core members from all sectors, but not by Tsai. Some of the responsible members are strongly against Tsai in many aspects, the nomination process included. A design this way would facilitate the "power distribution" among all sectors in the DPP, in effective reduces the power of chairperson. How would that be ridiculous and how would that be a "clear power grab?"

The lack of knowledge about the subject he studied and the way that the truth was presented in a distorted way to fit the context of "Tsai grabbing power" are quite a surprise, judging from the quality of his blog in the past.

Ever since Tsai gained more and more support, there are forces of all sorts trying to defame her. Some because of fear -- for example, Ma Ying-jeou refused to say her name but used "she" instead, admitting that saying her name will help put her in the spotlight and boost her fame. Some because of hatred -- a hidden hatred that you just can't rationalize, as revealed in some pro-blue (and some deep green!) supporters. I can't judge what category Frozen Garlic falls into, but I sure hope that his blog can go back to the usual quality asap.

Note: ironically, the title of his article is "catching up." Wish he has done that for real.

Be a party believing in the land and the people - Tsai Ing-wen's new year wish

2011-01-04T02:17:00.003+08:00

Update: I didn't know that the DPP has it translated:
DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen's 2011 New Year Statement

---------

DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen's 2011 new year wish, 做一個相信土地與人民的政黨：寫給2011年的民進黨, to DPP members. It delivers her messages on two key issues: sovereignty and economics. Translated below with my highlights.

如果現在還有人在懷疑民進黨是否能重新站起來，我會這樣回答：過去兩年幾次選舉的結果，已經給了明確的答案。人民已經恢復了對民進黨的信心，讓我們可以跟國民黨分庭抗禮。

If any still has a doubt whether the DPP could stand up again, I would respond: the election results in the past two years already provided the answer. We have regained people's trust, which allows us to compete with the KMT head to head.

民進黨是在戰後台灣，第一個從這塊土地上萌芽出來的政黨；從創黨那一天起，就宣示要跟人民大眾站在一起。台灣是一塊受過傷卻仍然滿懷希望的土地，也是一塊強權環伺卻始終堅持要作自己主人的土地。土地上的人民，有共同的過去，以及未來的使命。相信土地，相信人民，更要相信自己所代表的價值，這對2011年的民進黨，是最重要的事。

The DPP is the first ever political party that was spawn from this land (Taiwan) after the war (WWII). It aims at standing with the people since the day of establishment. Taiwan is a land that has suffered but is filled with hope. It is also a land that is encircled by super powers yet insists in being a master of her own. The people in this land share the common past as well as the future mission. Believing in the land, believing in the people and, especially, believing in the value that we represent for. These are the most important tasks for the DPP in 2011.

土地與人民，才是國家的根，我們始終相信是如此。因此當執政黨開始熱鬧非凡地慶祝「建國百年」時，我們實在不必冷嘲熱諷，反而可以邀請台灣人民一起來思考和檢視，每個人內心對自己國家的認識。其實，與其去爭論九二共識、一中各表、各表一中這些名詞，還不如直接去問問人民，你心中的國家是什麼？任何人都可以毫不猶豫地回答你，答案是台灣，或者是中華民國，但是這兩種答案背後都有一個簡單的意思，就是我的國家是這塊土地，她不屬於也不同於對岸的中華人民共和國。

It has always been our belief that the land and the people are the root of a country. Therefore, when the ruling party (KMT) starts celebrating in hustle and bustle the 100-year anniversary (of the founding of ROC), we don't have to be cynical. Instead, we can take this chance to ask all the people in Taiwan to ponder and review what we have in mind about our country. In fact, instead of arguing for jargon like "the 1992 concensus", "one China, with each side having its own interpretation", "different interpretations for one-China", we would rather ask the people directly --- what is your country in your mind? Anybody can answer that quickly, be it Taiwan, be it Republic of China. Hidden behind both of these two answers is a simple idea - this land is my country. It does not belong to or equivalent to the People Republic of China across the strait.

所以我一直不理解，為什麼馬總統最近一直在問問題，彷彿他對這個國家現在和未來的定位，還是不怎麼確定。其實，我們有這片土地，有2300萬人民，有走過漫漫改革長路所建立的民主體制；對於一個總統而言，投票給你的人在哪裡，你的國家就在哪裡。

Therefore, I have been puzzling why president Ma kept asking questions (about the fabricated "1992 consensus" saying that Taiwan and China have reached a consensus on the sovereignty of Taiwan), as though he is not quite sure about the current and future status of this country. In reality, we have this land, we have 23 million people, and we have a democratic system that is a fruit of long and slow innovation. To a president, it should have been clear that wherever your voters are, wherever your country is.

我們跟國民黨最大的不同就在於，國民黨認為「沒有中華民國就沒有台灣」，而我們卻相信「沒有台灣就沒有中華民國」。簡單說，他們膜拜的是「政權與統治者」，而我們信仰的是「土地與人民」。這裡的區別，在於我們堅持台灣的優先性，而我相信我們是站在多數人民的這一邊。

The biggest difference between the KMT and our party is that the KMT argues "Taiwan can't exist without the ROC", but we argues "the ROC can't exist without Taiwan." Simply put, the KMT worships "the regime and the ruler," yet we believe in "the land and the people." The line that makes the difference is that we insists Taiwan is our priority, and we believe that we are on the side with the majority of people.

1949年中華民國來到台灣，成為這塊土地歷史的一部份，我們瞭解並且尊重這個史實，也相信未來唯有民主制度，才能夠去變更這個存在了六十多年的體制。但人民現在真正需要的，不是藍綠在國家意識上的僵持對決，也不是花大錢去營造一個和土地脫節的認同感；人民期待看到的是，從現在起，不分藍綠的國民，能夠共同在沒有任何政治框架的前提下，自由地創造與選擇我們的未來。

The ROC government came to Taiwan In 1949 and became part of the history of this land. We understand and respect it as a historical fact. We also believe that the only way to change this sixty some year system is by way of a democratic process. But what the people really need at this moment is not the confrontation deadlock on nationality ideology between the green and blue camps; nor is to spend large amount of budgets to create an identity that is so detached from the land. What the people expect is that all people, no matter green or blue, have the free will to create and choose our future without a premise of certain political frame.

2010年，對絕大多數台灣人民來說，還是辛苦的一年。GDP恢復成長，消費也較為活絡，可是同一時間，物價也在上漲，最重要的，絕大多數人民的薪水與收入卻沒有成長。這代表了我們的經濟發展進入了一個新的模式，一個財富分配的不均等的發展型態，所以有人是開開心心享受復甦的果實，卻有人仍在寒冬裡與子女淚眼相望。這個模式繼續走下去，貧富差距、城鄉差距的現象會更加惡劣。

For most of the people in Taiwan, the 2010 was still a painstaking year. The GDP resumed growing, the consumption was more active. But at the same time, the living costs increased without corresponding increases on salary and income. It signifies a new model of our economic development, a model in which the wealth distribution is unbalanced. Therefore, while some enjoy the fruit of economic recovery happily, others can only share tears with their kids in the cold winter. Developing with this model, the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as the gap between the city and the country side, will be further enlarged.

2011年，民進黨的另一使命，就是要提出一個有別於目前國民黨的新經濟思維，來抵擋貧富差距的趨勢繼續在社會裡惡化。當國民黨自滿於一時GDP成長的數字裡，我們要走進人民的生活中，實際關心他們的就業與收入。數字再怎麼高，只要一般人民感受不到就是空的。民進黨要感受人民的感受，要為那些沒有經濟資本、也沒有社會資本的多數人民，構築一個安心的未來。民進黨是為這些人存在，我們每天都要自我提醒，如果沒有民進黨，這些人民的未來誰來為他們思考？這是我們創黨的初衷，也是此時此刻的我們必須捍衛的價值。

Therefore, another mission of the DPP's in 2011 is to offer a new economic idea different from that of the KMT's in order to resist the trend of increasing wealth gap that is deteriorating the society. For 2011, another mission of the DPP is to present an economic approach that is different from that of the KMT, to resist the worsening wealth gap in our society. When the KMT is satisfied with the number of the GDP growth, we want to walk into the lives of the people, to care for their jobs and incomes. No matter how high the apparent number is, it is empty as long as the people can't feel it. The DPP wants to to be affected by the people's experiences, to establish a secure future for the majority who don't have neither the economic capital nor the social resources. The DPP is for those people, so we have to remind ourselves everyday: if the DPP is not there for them, who will care for their future? This is the original intention of our party, and is the value we have to guard now.

2010年已過去，我們懷抱著感恩又走過了一年，感恩人民對民進黨的支持與鞭策，寬容與期待。民進黨不應該讓台灣人民等待太久，要做該做的事，做讓人民感動的事，在新的一年，全力以赴。

The 2010 has passed. We walked through it with appreciation, appreciating the support, the criticism, the lenience and the expectation that the people gave. The DPP should not let the people wait for too long. We need to put on full gear for what needs to be done and what touches the people.

Update: Thanks mike (see comment section) for pointing one flaw of my translation, as corrected in the two paragraphs up.

民進黨走統一路線？

2010-12-17T12:09:00.000+08:00

最近泛綠陣營對蔡英文路線的批判似乎有瘋狂加碼的趨勢。剛才在論壇看到一位獨派前輩的一段話：

『我前幾天告訴一位朋友，說民進黨現今路綫徹底走到盡頭，是宣佈統一路綫，這樣在選舉中，才可能打垮不統、不獨、不武的馬氏溫水模糊。』

嚇了我一跳。『民進黨走統一路線』這種說法根本毫無根據，『統一路線才能贏得選舉』更是無稽之談。

現在台灣人不願統一的人早已經超過 2/3，這已經是不容否認的現況。不要說馬英九，即使任何急統慢統終統的人要競選也不敢用統一的架勢。亦即，在現在的台灣，統一早已經是票房毒藥。連馬英九在 2008 年大選前一直必須在嘴皮子上保證他對台灣的忠誠。我敢保證，他那些愛台灣尊重民意保證不賣台的言論會在 2012 前再冒出來，以盡量掩飾他的統一傾向。

在這種現況下，實在很難想像會出現這種『不走統一路線不可能贏得選舉』的言論，更別說是來自獨派之口。

批評者對台灣民意趨向應該不會一無所知，但卻可以完全罔顧民意傾向而做出這種判斷。難不成只為了要批蔡英文，什麼錯亂的邏輯都可以拿來當武器嗎？

民進黨有很多可以批，但至少要把邏輯搞清楚。像這樣批已經是屬於『造謠』的範圍了。這種謠言試圖把民進黨跟『統一』這個票房毒藥綁在一起，謠言的獲利者恐怕會是國民黨。

眾皆感傷墮淚，惟後主嬉笑自若

2010-11-24T04:26:00.002+08:00

昭設宴款待，先以魏樂武戲於前，蜀官感傷，獨後主有喜色。昭令蜀人扮蜀樂於前，蜀官盡皆墮淚，後主嬉笑自若。酒至半酣，昭謂賈充曰：『人之無情，乃至於此！雖使諸葛孔明在，亦不能輔之久全，何況姜維呼？』乃問後主曰：『頗思蜀否？』後主曰：『此間樂，不思蜀也。』

這是三國演義第一百一十九回裡描述蜀國亡國的一段話。中國的三國時代，以正統漢朔自居的蜀國，傳到第二代就被以司馬昭為首的魏國殲滅。當時的蜀皇，人稱阿斗的~~馬英九~~後主，被抓到魏國。司馬昭擺酒席招待他。酒席中間，以蜀國的音樂舞蹈來當娛樂，看得跟著後主投降的蜀官們難過得掉下淚來。

但是身為亡國皇帝的~~馬英九~~後主，卻在對方慶祝亡國的酒席上很開心地嬉笑玩樂，對自己的國家在自己手中敗掉的事實，以及蜀官的亡國之恨竟沒有絲毫感覺。

會讓我想到這段，是因為昨天看到一則有關馬英九在面對我國跆拳道選手楊淑君在比賽中受到栽贓的受辱事件而啟動國安機制的報導。馬英九在鏡頭前面『嬉笑自若』，好像在玩一個很好玩的遊戲(影音)。

從該記者的問話『有啟動國安機制？』及馬英九的回答『有』中，可以知道那時正在談楊淑君被栽贓的事件。

該事件讓全台群情激憤，馬英九竟以嬉皮笑臉的態度面對，與民眾的悲憤心情完全脫節。

而且，現在五都大選在即，國民黨這場選戰荒腔走板，其支持者心中焦慮不安，從11月21日禮拜天的『為台北而走』的稀落人群，以及參與者的疲憊與靜默看得出，即使是平凡的國民黨員，都可以感受到：國民黨這個近百年的老店，可能在這一戰中遭遇重創。

而馬英九在這種局勢下竟然以嬉皮笑臉的態度面對受辱事件。這種麻木不仁的姿態，對選情恐怕只有雪上加霜。國民黨員看在眼裡，眼前勝利無望，敗亡的趨勢又因領導的無能而加速，能不感傷嗎？

當年司馬昭看到蜀後主亡國還能嬉笑自若，曾感嘆地說，一個人竟可以麻木不仁到這種地步，用這種人當領導，即使諸葛亮在世，也沒有辦法避免亡國的命運啊！

是啊！國民黨繼續支持這樣一個麻木不仁的人來帶領他們，即使是對手，恐怕也會一撒同情之淚吧？

後主的故事還有最後一段：司馬昭問後主是不是會想念蜀國，後主告訴他：我在這裡很快樂，不會想到蜀國。

這一段的現代版是這樣寫的：

民進黨問：人民的痛苦你感受得到嗎？現代後主說：我當總統當得很快樂（還可以再當六年），不覺得人民有什麼痛苦。

世世代代的含辱吞忍－楊淑君受辱事件的省思

2010-11-22T13:30:00.001+08:00

在國民黨的權貴統治下，不管是藍是綠，
只要不是特權階級，隨時可能被犧牲掉。
~~~ Echo ~~~

這幾天看著台灣的跆拳道選手楊淑君在亞運受辱的事件，感觸實在很深。這是一個自己國民受到外國侮辱的事情，而政府官員的第一個反應竟是站到外國人那邊，幫著外國人二度羞辱自己國人，要自己的國民把侮辱吞下去。

我們不滿、抗議，在群情沸騰的情況下，執政的國民黨才在嘴巴上在自己國內說要硬起來，但對外還是懦弱地像個龜兒子。

楊淑君帶著殘破的痛苦經驗，面對著這個應該為民服務，但卻對外諂媚的整個國家政府這樣龐大的官僚體系，她能夠寄望什麼呢？

而現在正是大選之前，是國民黨最需要人民選票的時候，他們竟還敢這樣漠視人民的屈辱！如果這件事發生在平時，在國民黨不再需要人民的選票的時候，那些在上面擺盡架子的政府高官，還有可能甩你嗎？

想到這裡，一個深藏在記憶深處，早已經忘懷了的往事，突然潮水一樣湧上心頭，讓我措不及防。。。

******

那是很多年前，我還在讀研究所的時候。我雖然不是國民黨員，但卻深信國民黨在教科書上在電視機前面所說的一切，包括那些所謂『五千年偉大中國文化』的禮義廉恥，還有國民黨政府所謂的勤政愛民~~天下為工~~天下為公等口號。我讀到中國的史地會心生嚮往，看到余光中朱天心等人的文章會感動莫名。那是我生命中一段『以中國人為榮』的歷史。

學校開學了，學生開始選課。那時候所方規定，所有選課都要所長簽名。於是我拿了選好的選課單，到辦公室去找所長。我沒有坐下來，我想簽個名應該很快。

那個人接過我的選課單之後，打開抽屜，拿出另一張紙來，上面有一個表格。

我還在想那是什麼，只見他把那表格在桌上放好，左手拿起我的選課單，右手拿起一支筆，在我的選課單跟表格中間比來比去，口中念念有詞－－我這才知道，表格上列好了包括我與所有同學在內的一份選課單。原來，我們所有學生『應該』選什麼課，他早就先決定了。

只見他右手的筆停在一個科目上，說：『這個 XXX 課，很好的課，你怎麼沒有選？』

為什麼必須選我不想讀的科目？我開始找理由跟他辯解。

但他顯然根本不甩我的選課意願，只一徑地要逼迫我更改選課單，結果更激發了我內心的反抗。我可以看到他的表情漸漸凝結。很快地，原本的和顏悅色突然變成猙獰的面目。他瞪著我，用極大的音量說：

『為什麼這個所從開始到現在都沒事，就你一個人敢這樣搗亂？』

我嚇了一跳：什麼？我是第一個？以前所有的學長學姐都乖乖的聽話改選課單？

我無法想像。選課不是學生自己的權益嗎？我以為替自己爭取應有的權益，是每個人都會做的事。

他看我並沒有屈服的意願，竟揮起手中的筆，指著我的鼻子威脅說：

『你要知道，你們必修課中的 YYY 課，是所裡每一個教授都要簽名才可以過的！！！！』

這下我也火起了，我立刻大聲頂回去：

『YYY 課要每一個教授簽名，跟我選什麼課有什麼關係？』

這句話讓他惱羞成怒，只見他氣到說不出話來，嘩的一聲突然從椅子上站了起來，同時，好像忘了手上還有一支筆，右手重重地往桌上一拍，發出嘭的一聲巨響。那支筆被打得像箭一樣快速飛出，一直撞到牆壁上才掉下來。

老實說如果是現在的我，沒有像當時那樣年輕氣盛，看到眼前這一幕激情演出，可能會再想想我所挑戰的什麼樣的勢力。

但那時候哪裡想得到這麼多。雖然不知道該怎麼應對，卻不甘心在強勢之下低頭。

我伸手搶回我的選課單，很快轉身走出所長辦公室。雖然想到剛才那個可笑的一幕，心中忍不住冒出一絲絲甜甜的快感，但卻有著更多的恐慌與茫然。下一步，我該怎麼辦？

我是該堅持下去為自己爭取權益呢？還是要跟以前的學生一樣，把不公不義吞忍下去，做個乖學生？

考慮良久，我決定只有堅持下去才對得起自己的良心。於是我開始到處找師長親友談這件事並爭取支持。

意外的是，沒有人要（或者說，敢）支持我。多數拿出那個老套勸我：『當學生最重要的就是唸書。。。』

這是我當學生時最痛恨的一句話，因為那是在要我對書本以外的事務裝聾作啞，唸書一回事，做人另一回事，表裡不一，對我來講簡直是一種侮辱，因此這種方式的勸說，如果要說有什麼效果的話，只會更激發我的鬥志。

******

有一天，我的一個朋友的媽媽，向來很照顧我的，找我去談這件事。

她並沒有像其他人一樣，叫我當個乖學生就好。她先告訴我，她是北一女畢業的，也是台大畢業的。這兩個學校，水準風氣與老師學生的資質，在台灣都是最好的。

她語重心長地說：『我在這兩個學校，看過無數個學生向老師爭權益的例子，但從來沒有看到學生贏過。』

我對這句話並沒有什麼感覺。總不能說沒有人成功就退縮吧？要不然“國父”革命也不須革那麼多次，不是嗎？

她看我好像呆若木雞，接著說了一段讓我終身難忘的話：

『一個人能夠當到所長，背後一定有某種力量的支持，不可能孤單一個人爬到那個位置。如果你站在更上級的人的角度來看，現在有一個不知名的小毛頭在跟這個他們支持的人爭，你想想他們會犧牲你呢？還是犧牲他們長久支持的人？』

我這次是真的呆住了。這是我從來沒有想過的。如夢初醒的當下，幾天下來的高昂鬥志就在一瞬間完全冷卻下來。

她接著說，你們這個所長有美國籍。照規定，有美國籍是不能當所長的。

我明白了，她是在提醒我，有個力量在背後撐腰，讓這個人可以有恃無恐地做無法無天的事。而在這後面的特權勢力，不是我一個沒有背景的小小學生能承受的。

我這才開始意識到，這不只是什麼公不公道講不講理的問題。在這個『叫你把不公不義吞下去』的官腔後面，有著一個利益交錯的龐大勢力。如果我要跟這個龐大的勢力計較不公不義，我很可能會像一隻微不足道的小螞蟻，被踩死一百遍也不足惜。

終於，在萬分不甘的情況下，我把這件事吞了下去，乖乖地照著所長的意思更改了選課單。

表面上，似乎整個事情已經圓滿結束，大家各自回到施暴者與被害者的角色，和睦相處，好似沒有人受到傷害。

但是，那是我忍辱做了違背我良心的事的結果。我的心中已經像大地震徹底震過一樣。原來，在國民黨控制的社會裡，他們所謂正義公理都是騙人的，只有『特權』決定一切。沒有特權，碰到事情就只能自己吞下去。而這也是那個特權階級對你我所期望的。

******

為什麼這個看似無關的陳年往事，會在楊淑君受辱事件之後突然從記憶中跑出來？

那時我是個單純的學生，我排斥甚至鄙視政治。我深信國民黨的教育，盼望著什麼時候可以反攻大陸，將我的苦難的同胞解救出來。在當時的我眼裡，民進黨是應該關在監牢的叛亂份子，根本不應該在社會上存在。如果把當時的我直接降落到現在的台灣，我會是一個不折不扣的深藍。

但是，在國民黨的統治下，不管我藍得多藍，愛中國愛得多深，我的社會定位只能是『受害者』，只因為我不是特權階級。碰到不公不義的時候，我只能『忍辱吞下去』，正因為對特權階級來說，確保那個不公不義的特權階級的既得利益，遠比維護我這種小螞蟻的公義符合他們的利益。因此不管我什麼顏色，甚至不管我是不是關心政治，都將被犧牲掉。

更讓我痛心的是，那已經是發生在好幾十年前的事情了！！

經過了這幾十年，同一個政黨，面對不公不義的受害者，為什麼還是一樣只會叫你吞下去？

而現在的執政黨還是人民用選票給予他們權力的。這樣下去是不是意味著，我們的子子孫孫都將面臨同樣的『只能含辱吞忍』的命運？

我的經歷跟楊淑君的受辱比起來根本不算什麼。而要是拿來跟那位勇敢的，自焚的劉伯煙老先生，還有大埔的喝農藥自殺的阿嬤來比，更是微不足道。

是的，你還記得他們嗎？國民黨這個特權階級重新掌權才不過兩年半，已經有民眾再也吞忍不下去。他們已經被逼到無奈的盡頭，不得不犧牲最寶貴的生命來對這個特權階層做無力但莊嚴的抗議。

那我的孩子呢？你的孩子呢？我們用選票替我們的後代選擇了只能吞忍的命運，是不是有那麼一天，你我的孩子會終於無法再吞忍下去，而必須選擇悲壯的方式來保有起碼的尊嚴呢？

仇恨花園－郝龍斌大安公園造勢晚會

2010-11-16T12:35:00.001+08:00

中研院政治科學研究所助理研究員 Nathan Batto，研究台灣選舉已經十幾年，曾經觀察過台灣無數的選舉造勢大會。上個禮拜五，他去大安公園觀察郝龍斌的造勢晚會，並把觀察印象寫在他的部落格 Frozen Garlic 裡。筆者在此大略轉述一下他的觀察。由於他的文章是用英文寫的，我這篇轉述等於是由現場的華語被轉到英文又轉回華文，因此用詞上必然跟現場的華語用詞有所差距，讀者不妨看看意思就好。

Nathan 說，郝龍斌的造勢讓他非常驚訝。他的整體印象是：郝龍斌到底還要不要選？

他以 1976 年美國總統大選，競選連任的福特總統與挑戰者卡特對壘為例。福特總統採取了被稱為『玫瑰花園』的戰術（rose garden strategy），也就是不到處競選，只呆在總統府照顧他的玫瑰花園。

他說，同樣的，郝龍斌『幾乎將所有的時間與能量用在花博的開幕上』，可以稱作『玫瑰戰術』，就像當年要競選連任的福特一樣。

可是，福特當年並沒有當選。事實上，據我所知，福特本人並沒有想當選的意願。

Nathan 接著提到，大安公園附近住有很多外省人（他用的詞是『mainlander』），向來是泛藍的鐵票區。1990 年代新黨發跡的時候，在這裡辦的一系列活動，總是有為數非常眾多，自動自發而且充滿熱情的群眾，那些群眾是他在台灣參與的政治活動中所見過的最激情最投入的參與者。因此，Nathan 對這次的活動也有同樣的期待。

結果卻讓他大失所望。參加人數大概有 2000～2500人，而且看得出來其中可能至少有四分之三是被動員來的，因此不是跟往常一樣是附近居民的主動參與，也沒有以往群眾的熱情。雖然不見得很無聊，但卻對活動本身顯得意興闌珊。

第一個上台演講的是國民黨的立委洪秀柱。令人震驚的是，洪秀柱發表了一篇極端偏激的演講。

她說，2000年我們丟掉政權，非常痛苦。這帶給我們整整八年的仇恨。仇恨！然後我們很高興在 2008年贏回政權，但有些事情還是讓我們很不痛快。這兩年，我們非常不爽，大家都知道為什麼！但在昨天，我們的不爽終於稍微得到一點點疏解。雖然我們之中有很多人還是很不滿，認為處罰應該更重才對。但我想我們可以接受。

洪秀柱從頭到尾都沒有提到『陳水扁』的名字，但讀者應該都知道，『這兩年非常不滿』指的是馬政府沒有把陳水扁定罪，『一點點疏解』指的是陳水扁日前被判 12年，『應該更重才對』指的可能是某些人要把陳水扁處死才甘心（有人曾對陳水扁詛咒『死得很難看』）。

Nathan 接著提到，洪秀柱整個演講重複『恨』字好幾次，好確定大家都有聽到。可以說，整個演講就是一個鼓吹仇恨報復的演講。

這是讓人不解的地方。Nathan 提到一般參政者多會主張和諧：

【很多政治人物喜歡宣揚『愛』的觀念。我雖然到現在還是不知道這個『愛』是指什麼。但我卻非常肯定，沒有任何演講可以像洪秀柱這個演講一樣反愛反到這種程度。她訴求的不是（法律上的）處罰，而是苦毒的折磨。從她的言論你可以想像，如果把案子交到她手上，她很可能會(對陳水扁)施以中古世紀使用的酷刑，譬如說，活生生的剝皮、火燒、打斷骨頭等等，並認為這些酷刑都是正當合宜的。】

Lots of politicians like to talk about “love.” I still don’t have any idea what love means, but I’m pretty sure that this speech was just about as far from love as you can get. She wanted pain, not simple punishment. You got the idea that if it were up to her, she might settle on some medieval torture (flaying the skin, burning flesh, breaking bones, all while the victim is still alive) as an appropriate sentence.

對於國民黨竟敢讓洪秀柱站到台上去傳達這種充滿仇恨的訊息，Nathan 感到異常震驚。

接下來郝龍斌跟馬英九都上台演講。根據 Nathan 的描述，馬英九講得中規中距，還算是像在替郝龍斌助選。但郝龍斌自己的演講則是亂七八糟，完全不成樣子。他的演講技巧奇差無比，根本不知道什麼時候該提高聲調來強調重點。

但是最大的問題在於：他的競選內容似乎主要是在抱怨說自己沒有受到肯定。他重複強調自己有在做事，但除了花博之外卻說不出到底做了什麼，因此對聽眾來說，聽起來好像他實際上沒有做什麼，只想用空洞的喊叫來掩飾說不出口的政績。

而且他的邏輯實在很糟糕。有一次提到民進黨蘇貞昌陣營攻擊花博。這次他倒是提供了實際例子－說他把錢浪費在某些蔬菜上。他對這些“浪費金錢”的指控提出這樣的理由來反駁：蘇貞昌陣營忘了，花博不是他的或台北市的花博，而是所有台灣人的花博！

所以這樣就可以名正言順地漫天開價，亂花人民的血汗錢了？

這就是國民黨台北市市長郝龍斌的邏輯。

此外，他過度吹捧了花博的身價，而對真正與民生習習相關的問題卻避而不談。高漲的房價、坑洞的路面、混亂的交通等等，這些人民的切身之痛，會因為一個花博而減輕絲毫嗎？更別說，這個花博是在極度浪費人民血汗錢，而且充滿貪腐弊案的情況下辦出來的。郝龍斌試圖用這樣一個浮華不實的花園來麻痺人民的痛苦，到底能夠感動多少人呢？

其他的細節我就不再多談。台灣這十幾年的民主之路走來艱辛，民眾在藍綠對抗中搖擺顛頗，早已經厭倦了極端的社會對立。而以往常被國民黨貼上對立標籤的民進黨，早已經在新的領導階層帶領下，經過嚴肅的內部辯論與反省，漸漸地走出對抗的陰影，開始以和諧合作來號召民眾。

相反的，喜歡指責對手製造對立的國民黨高層，已經執政兩年半了，卻只會緊緊咬住前總統陳水扁的影子不放，每逢選舉一到就操作扁案來對支持者灌輸仇恨的種子。自己黨內貪污腐敗治國無能，但舉一國之力來散播仇恨製造對立，卻是很在行。這種『以暴戾之氣治國，以仇恨報復競選』的方式，看在當初寄望國民黨能帶來和諧社會而投票支持他們的選民眼裡，不知道會不會因為自己反而成為社會暴戾之氣的幫手而感到極端的諷刺？

Update.1: 雖然此文內容絕大部分根據 Nathan 的文章，但並非該文的“翻譯”。照翻的地方有用引號標出來。 Nathan 在他的部落格說明他嚴守中立，不會替任何政黨宣傳的立場。如果讀者看了我這篇文章而有那樣的感覺，那是筆者的責任，不是 Nathan 的。Nathan 的部落格累積了相當多有關台灣選舉的客觀分析，建議讀者多多參考。

Update.2: 第二天同一地點，蘇貞昌辦了一個 OPEN TAIPEI 城市夢想音樂會，傳達的訊息是愛，和諧，與夢想。

馬政府指示：以後中國人來訪，原本沒有國旗的地方禁止出現國旗

2010-11-14T16:22:00.007+08:00

選舉只剩兩個禮拜，陸委會花錢拍了一個愛國旗的廣告 [1]，針對中國人受邀來台時，某些台灣單位出現侮辱國旗的自我作踐行為（譬如說，2007年9月11日在台北舉行的亞洲杯女子足球賽，北市府禁止民眾帶國旗進入會場；2008年底中國人陳雲林來訪時，台北市警察竟然強行沒收在街頭拿國旗的民眾手中的國旗甚至逮捕民眾等等不勝枚舉），強調馬政府一貫的政策是不會主動拆旗。

陸委會主委賴幸媛在記者會上[2]這麼說：

『雖然這（愛國旗？）是政府三令五申的政策，可是還是有很多的團體或機關或學校不夠清楚。』

所以賴幸媛說政府要『提醒』台灣人有關馬政府愛國旗的政策，『將來就不要有這些很不合時宜也很不妥當的一些處置。』

賴幸媛接著昭告了馬政府的新指示：

『不管江陳會或任何的會議，政府的政策就是 -- 國．旗．原．本．在．哪．裡，就．在．哪．裡！』

非常有創意的造句，聽起來好像是針對那些在中國人來訪時主動拆掉國旗的單位所下的命令，馬政府好像很委屈又很愛國，不是嗎？

可是，面對中國人時會侮辱自己國旗的，好像都跟馬英九有關吧？那些會自己主動把國旗藏起來去舔共的，好像都是認同馬英九的親中人士吧？

事實上，前面提到的2007年北市府的禁旗事件，不正是當時的市長馬英九帶頭下指示的嗎？

要不是馬英九當年以首都市長之尊，堅決地帶領台灣走入『禁旗時代』，接下來這幾年，大大小小自我閹割的禁旗事件，恐怕都不會發生吧？

而他手下那個“一人之下萬人之上”的行政院長吳敦義，日前恐怕也不敢在立法院怒指開南大學學生在中國隊伍出現的地方插國旗的舉動是『故意拿國旗來引起紛爭』吧？

政論家林保華 [3] 說：

『現在在中國人面前搬走國旗的，都是邀請中國客人來台灣的國民黨人，而不是台灣的民眾。因此做廣告完全沒有必要，只要馬主席給黨內一個訓示，學老共那樣，誰這樣做就是違反黨紀，對他們“雙規”就可以了，何必浪費納稅人的金錢呢？』

既然馬英九是打開禁旗風氣的禁旗王，之後跟進的又是他手下的人，陸委會這個廣告片，看起來像是 做賊喊抓賊。難不成馬政府在選前突然痛改前非？

台灣人如果這樣認為，恐怕是太小看馬政府的欺世盜名的功力與用心了。

首先，『國旗原本在哪裡就在哪裡』，並沒有說『原本』是多久。如果我明天要去函邀請中國人在一個月後來訪，今天晚上就先去把國旗撤掉，這樣不管邀請時或中國人到達時，國旗都“原本不在那裡”啊！

所以，只要先拆旗再去邀請，甚至於只要在中國人到達之前多早幾天先拆旗，就完全符合這指示。所以這個指示對那些會撤國旗的單位來講跟放屁沒兩樣，根本不具任何效力，充其量也不過三令五申變成四令六申罷了。

但馬政府的用心重點恐怕不只是『做做樣子』。既然說『國旗原本在哪裡就在哪裡』，那想想，馬英九當年下令禁旗的亞洲杯女子足球賽，被馬英九禁止的看台上那些國旗，是“原本”就在看台上的嗎？

不是。國旗是民眾帶去的。

陳雲林來台時，警察在街上公然沒收國旗，想想看，台北街道上“原本”有國旗嗎？

沒有。國旗是民眾帶去的。

中國籃球隊來開南大學比賽，開南學生在賽程中某一天在校園中插滿國旗，因此氣走中國隊。請問，校園裡“原本”就插滿國旗嗎？

沒有。國旗是學生插上的。

這些之前因為國旗而被馬政府禁止、沒收、批判的事例，都是『當初原本沒國旗，中國人來時國人拿國旗出來』的例子。賴幸媛故意在記者會上講『還是有很多的團體或機關或學校不夠清楚』，誤導國人去相信這道新政策是針對那些機關學校。但如前所言，這種指令對他們根本是做做樣子而已。

賴幸媛在記者會中明白指出，政府之所以會下這道新指令，主要正是因為開南大學的學生插旗事件。可是該事件並沒有任何機關學校在中國人面前拆旗啊！有的是愛國學生『在原本沒有國旗的地方』插旗，不是嗎？

而政府竟然因為這個事件，特別訂出一條新政策來。由此可見，馬政府所謂的『國旗原本在哪裡就在哪裡』的新政策，真正的對象應該是那些膽敢違背聖上旨意，在原本沒有國旗的地方拿國旗的人民啊！

這道新政策的目的，顯然是要針對這些人訂定一個制裁的根據：

也就是說，在這之前，馬政府只是在事後對政府單位自己沒收國旗的行為口頭上提出種種藉口來合理化，現在竟更進一步，明目張膽地用行政命令將公家單位未來可能發生的禁旗行為整個『制度化』。以後台灣各機關學校，只要拿著馬政府這道聖旨，以『上級命令』就可以禁止或逮捕在中國人面前拿國旗的國人，不必再多做什麼解釋了。

馬政府這樣做，恐怕是為了陳雲林在今年底的再度來訪，把馬屁早早地先拍好，告訴陳雲林說，馬政府已經下令：在他來訪的時候，全台灣禁止移動國旗，所有的國旗都會乖乖地呆在他們“原本”呆的地方，絕不會跑出來驚擾到他的聖駕。

問題是，現在正是五都大選的緊要關頭啊！馬政府竟敢在這時候公然花納稅錢做廣告對中國交心，難道不怕國人用選票制裁嗎？

難道這個公然輸誠的動作背後有什麼利益交換，而國民黨從這個交易所獲得的利益，將大到足以彌補因輸誠而流失的選票，讓馬政府膽敢這樣做？

[1] 陸委會「捍衛國家主權--國旗篇」宣導短片
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltm_QN2nJNE

[2] 陸委會國旗廣告綠批浪費錢－民視新聞
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ecCNYTi2s

[3] 國旗在哪裡就在哪裡？林保華
http://lingfengcomment.pixnet.net/blog/post/27534038

Total of 7917 Contestants in the 2010 Mayor, Councilor and Borough Elections

2010-09-19T07:38:00.000+08:00

The registration for the 2010 elections of city mayors, councilors and boroughs ended yesterday with total of 7917 contestants (五都登記截止 7917人參選).

Table.1 Number of Contestants in 2010 Elections

Positions	Seats	Contestants
Positions	Seats	Total	DPP	KMT	TSU	PFP	NP	Others	Non-p
Mayors	5	14	5	5	0	0	0	0	4
Councilors	314	649	161	208	15	17	9	7	232
Boroughs	3758	7254	462	1843	0	0	0	5	4944
Total	4077	7917	7917

* DPP=Democratic Party; KMT=Chinese Nationalist Party(Koumingtang); TSU=Taiwan Solidity Union; PFP=People First Party; NP=New Party; Others= other parties; Non-p= non-partisan

Table.2 Schedule of 2010 Elections

2010.10.22	Review Qualifications / Notify qualifiers 審定候選人名單，並通知抽籤
2010.10.29	Qualifiers draw the ballot order 候選人抽籤決定號次
2010.11.11	Announce the candidates, the allowed dates of campaign and the allowed time slot each day; 公告候選人名單與競選活動期間的起、止日期及每天競選活動起、止時間
2010.11.12	Host official campaign debates 辦理選舉公辦政見發表會
2010.11.26	Host official campaign debates 辦理選舉公辦政見發表會
2010.11.27	Cast the ballots 五都直轄市長、市議員及里長三合一選舉投票

預測國民黨越輸越多，政大未來事件交易所乾脆關站止血 ?

2010-09-18T23:33:00.006+08:00

號稱（事實上也是）國內預測選舉最準的「政大未來事件交易所」，在連續幾個禮拜預測國民黨越輸越多之後，突然在昨天無預警關站。整個網站完全封網，連以前進行過的交易資料、現在進行一半的交易資料等，完全坑殺。

這是一個很形跡可疑的動作。台灣現在正面臨非常重要的五都大選，五個直轄市第一次同時改選，選民涵蓋台灣大半人口，其重要性不亞於總統大選，說是台灣歷史上重大事件之一也不為過。在這個對台灣非常關鍵的時刻，每個單位都盡可能提供越多越詳盡的民調以作為選舉分析的參考。身為一個不斷宣傳自己是預測最準的未來事件交易所，為什麼會選在這個時候突然「自殘」呢？

該所目前主頁『未來事件交易所暫停營運公告』上提出的「藉口」是：

學術研究的資源畢竟相當有限，為了讓交易所永續發展與擴大運用，「未來事件交易所」即將公司化。未來將由政治大學預測市場研究中心與「未來事件交易股份有限公司」共同合作開發新平台，擴大各類合約議題與交易功能。屆時歡迎各位會員再度參與，發揮眾人的智慧、增進人類福祉。

什麼叫做「學術研究的的資源畢竟相當有限」？而且，要公司化不能再等兩個半月嗎？有必要在這麼重要的時刻，放棄自己扮演的如此重要的、向來引以為豪的角色而且將整個網站連新舊資料全面關掉嗎？

由這些似是而非的藉口看起來，背後恐怕有不可告人的原因。我們若把該所最近對選舉的預測結果拿出來看看，馬上就可以看到可疑的政治操作之處。

其中勝負差距大的台中、台南與高雄就先不談。底下我把未來事件交易所過去將近兩個月對所謂「戰況膠著」的台北市與新北市的預測列出來：

未來事件交易所對 2010 選舉的預測
日期	台北市		新北市
日期	蘇貞昌	郝龍斌	蔡英文	朱立倫
2010.8.3	49.4	49.1	48.4	49.7
2010.8.11	49.1	51	50	51.1
2010.8.17	49.8	49	49.6	49.9
2010.8.24	52	48	49.7	50.7
2010.8.31	52.4	47.4	52.3	48.5
2010.9.7	53.8	46	52.9	48.3
資料來源：政治大學預測市場研究中心

畫個圖就更清楚：

北市新生高與花博弊案在 8月17日被揭發。之後國民黨的郝龍斌一路下滑，跟民進黨的蘇貞昌越拉越大，在 9月8日已經拉大到將近 8 個百分點。新北市國民黨朱立倫也輸民進黨蔡英文越輸越多。照趨勢看，國民黨在北二都都越輸越多。這時交易所突然關站，新舊資料一併毀去，讀者再也看不到國民黨越輸越多的趨勢。
資料來源：政治大學預測市場研究中心

從圖中看出，郝龍斌自從新生高與花博弊案在 8月17日被揭發之後，當選機率如脫軌的雲霄飛車般一路下滑，到 9月8日短短20天已經輸了八個百分點，而且看起來還在狂跌的趨勢中。

不但如此，連朱立倫的當選率也跟著下滑，已經從弊案揭發前的贏一個百分點變成輸將近五個百分點，雖然有緩檔的趨勢，但差距似乎還在拉大中。

照這個趨勢這樣下去，國民黨的選情，在這個全台灣最準的預測中心所做出的預測中，將會「死得很難看」。

可是，就在這個時候，這個以「最準」為標榜的預測中心好像突然說：這樣不算，我不跟你們玩了。而且，以前玩的都不算！

然後當然要掰一些美美的藉口來把可疑的自殘講得冠冕堂皇。

更可疑的是，在這個關站的同一個時段，國民黨開始放出「郝龍斌民調已經回升且小贏」的風聲，而且中國時報馬上跟著做出相對應的民調報導與之呼應。這些民調與所知趨勢不符，但是民眾已經沒有政大交易所的趨勢可以作為比較。

政大交易所的突然關站，使得民眾在最需要民調的關鍵時刻失去「台灣最準」的預測，放出空間讓國民黨可以隨便操弄民調，看起來好像兩者一唱一搭配合得天衣無縫。這樣搞，把一個原本中立客觀的學術研究網站搞成掩護貪腐無能政黨的遮羞布，以後還有客觀的本錢嗎？

自立晚報淪為國民黨的打手？

2010-09-17T23:49:00.001+08:00

今天看到一則新聞：唱衰新北市捷運蔡英文硬拗，原本以為是什麼在台中國報在替國民黨打選戰，仔細一看竟然是自立晚報。我想，好吧！看看到底講些什麼，結果一看，裡面全篇都是國民黨在罵蔡英文的片面說詞，為文的記者蕭博樹既沒有採訪蔡英文的說法，也沒有做任何的事實查證。

這種片面報導已經是非常不專業了，但如果在標題上註明：

『唱衰新北市捷運 國民黨：蔡英文硬拗』

那至少讀者立刻知道那只是在報導國民黨的觀點。但該文在標題上卻沒註明，反而直接採用國民黨的立場，讓整篇新聞報導變成國民黨攻擊蔡英文的文宣。

到底是蕭博樹記者不專業呢？還是自立晚報已經淪為國民黨的打手？

公視對馬政府打壓新聞自由的陳述

2010-09-10T07:49:00.008+08:00

底下是在新聞局告公視的官司中，公視董事長鄭同僚對審判長提出的補充陳述。轉貼自鄭同僚的臉書 (9/8/2010)，紅色是我標的。

新聞局於六月底向台北地方法院提出公視董事會1至6月會議無效的法律訴訟，繼續干預公視運作。今天，台北地方法院開庭，我出庭為公視作法的正當性做補充說明。以下是法庭上公開發言重點，也將會以此書面資料補送給審判長。

敬愛的審判長：

我是公視董事長鄭同僚，今天站這裡，以沈痛的心情，向您陳述我的心聲。

我國公共電視法第11條明白規定：「公共電視屬於國民全體，其經營獨立自主，不受干涉」。尊重公共電視獨立自主，本來就是全世界民主國家的基本共識。我國公視法如此明白的宣示，讓我們能昂然站在民主國家的行列。

很不幸的，徒法不足以自行。今天，我們得在此，控訴一股破壞這種民主社會基本共識的強大力量，而這股力量竟然是最應該維護媒體自由與國家形象的「行政院新聞局」。

新聞局去年8月因為在增聘8名公視董事過程中其作法「未臻完全合法」、「鑿痕斑斑，紊亂體制」，被監察院提出糾正。請注意，到目前為止，他們還沒有依據監察院的糾正完成改善。不但如此，他們為了掩飾自己被監察院糾正未改的過失，竟然對我們不願意妥協的公視董事提出兩次假處分，同時還提出今天這個訴求公視董事會會議無效的訴訟。

從今年1月到7月，陳勝福等5名董事集體不參與公視董事會開會，惡意缺席超過16次，造成開會人數不足，使得董事會不斷流會。但是，公視法規定每個月需要開會一次，而且，公視許多重要議案也必須決議，以維持正常營運，若任由陳勝福等5人長期缺席無法開會，勢必造成公視嚴重經營問題。我和另外六位董事基於職責所在，迫不得已，採取監事會的建議，依據內政部會議規範中「不足額」的條文開會。

在過去16次開會前，董事會辦公室都經過掛號信、手機簡訊、電子郵件以及電話，四種方式一一通知所有董事開會，陳勝福等5人，卻仍堅拒不出席。這顯然已經違反公民託付的義務，而不是單純一次、兩次的議事杯葛或不同意見表達。

公視曾經針對陳勝福等董事集體長期缺席，造成董事會不斷流會的情況行文給新聞局，請教他們，若公視董事會不用內政部議事規範不足額相關規定開會，新聞局有何良方？但，新聞局不但不予理會，或規勸陳勝福等來開會，反而對負責任不斷開會的7位董事提出假處分，讓杯葛開會超過半年的陳勝福有機會被「推舉」為「代理董事長」。

公視董事會當前所有重大爭議，主要來自新聞局被監察院糾正而不改。今天，新聞局竟然還進一步浪費公帑，花錢僱請律師，對公視在1月到7月間的董事會決議提起無效的訴訟，新聞局至此，已然荒腔走板，由媒體自由保護者的角色，變成媒體自由的加害者。

我們今天所以還願意站在這裡堅持理念，我們的義務律師群所以還積極為我們出庭辯護，是因為，我們想為台灣的媒體自由立下典範。我們要用所有可能合法的手段，阻擋新聞局種種粗暴的作為，讓政治干預的黑手，無法伸進公共電視。我們不相信，台灣沒有公理。

去年底，公視曾經邀請一位英國BBC高階主管來訪，我請教他，英國公共電視如何面對可能的政治干預。他說：「先婉拒，再婉拒，最後要公開力抗到底。」我們曾經試過所有婉轉溝通的可能，現在，已經是毫無退路，公開力抗的階段。

我是大學老師，也是兩個孩子的爸爸，相信審判長您也有可愛的親戚後代，如果今天我們容許新聞局用如此粗暴的方式，干預媒體自由得逞，我們將如何教育下一代堅持民主理念？如何和下一代談論正義是非？審判長，您的判決很重要，請為我們的下一代立下絕不讓政治力干預媒體自由的典範。

鄭同僚 2010年9月8日

轉貼自鄭同僚的臉書 (9/8/2010):
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145843812121779&id=100001151663628

● 新聞局和陳勝福，究竟把公視當成什麼地方了？公民社會還要吞忍多久？ (9/9/2010)

今年8月4日，新聞局不但不理會監察院的糾正趕快改正，還濫用公帑僱請律師，對公視董事長及其他六名董事第二次提出假處分，使7人無法行使職權。

公視董事陳勝福趁機於8/12在律師站身邊、警察守大門，再以新聞局的「洽悉」公文為依據情況下，宣布已被若干董事「推舉」為公視「代理董事長」。

儘管公視監事會要求陳勝福說明受推舉代理過程，陳勝福竟不予理會，至今也還沒有公開他到底是如何被「推舉」的會議記錄。新聞局和陳勝福，究竟把公視當成什麼地方了？

還有更過份的，8月28日，陳勝福召開了一次「公視董事會」，但這次會議，沒有依據公視董事會會議規則通知監事列席開會，也沒有依據會議規則列出會議討論事項，開會之後，目前也還沒公開會議記錄，如同開了一場黑箱作業式的秘密會議。

會後，竟說依據該次會議，發函改派華視法人董事。公視監事會曾經透過正式會議決議，要求瞭解8/28該次會議內容，但，得到的回復，竟然說要監事會先拿出法律依據！！

陳勝福先不通知監事會參與開會，繼之缺席監事會邀約說明，後又拒絕公視監事會索取會議資料，蠻橫到完全不顧正當程序與監事會依法監督職權，真令人嘆為觀止。

今年1月到7月之間，公視董事會一開完會，新聞局常常馬上發佈新聞稿，說公視董事會會議無效云云，現在換成他們「洽悉」的陳勝福當「代理董事長」，卻裝聾作啞了。陳勝福和新聞局，究竟把公視當成什麼地方了？

還有。今天，9月9日，陳勝福召開「華視董事會」，華視是公司法人，陳勝福竟然違反公司法規定，又不通知監察人開會。而且，根據會議討論事項，他們將通過新總經理的任命。

華視從民國95年公共化以來，曾經選任了兩位新總經理，一位是李遠（小野），一位是陳正然。兩位在就任前，都經歷過公開的遴選過程，而且過程全程錄音錄影，留有紀錄可查。其目的，就是要讓公共化華視的總經理選任過程公開透明，讓公民社會可以監督。

今天，陳勝福不但不願意交代自己被推舉的會議過程，竟然還打破華視以往選任新總經理的慣例，省去公開遴選過程，直接選任總經理。陳勝福和新聞局，究竟把公廣集團當成什麼地方了？這樣不理會程序正當性的陳勝福和新聞局，公民社會還要吞忍多久？

轉貼自鄭同僚的臉書 (9/9/2010):
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=146103285429165&id=100001151663628

● (8/14/2010) Opera director appointed as provisional PTS chairman

The controversy surrounding operations of the PTS Board of Directors arose two years ago when the Government Information Office (GIO) — under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government that took office in May that year — unilaterally changed six PTS board members that represented the GIO.

Last year, the KMT-dominated legislature revised the Public Television Act (公共電視法) to increase the number of seats on the PTS board from 13 to 21, increasing the government’s representation on the board.

Ma Ying-jeou's Anti-Corruption Freezes When It Comes to Taipei Flora Scandal

2010-09-08T01:09:00.004+08:00

The scandal of sky-high overpayment by Taipei City government in the preparation of upcoming Taipei International Flora Expo (TIFE) keeps revealing more and more audacious behaviors of the city officials. City councilors from both the KMT and the DPP parties have been trying hard to request the official decision-making documents but got stonewalled again and again. The officials gave an excuse that they need to "compile" those documents first.

Lets see if we can cover it up

We didn't learn the meaning of "compile" until the documents were finally handed over. The DPP's Taipei City Councilor, Jian Yu-yen (簡余晏), examined one of the them ^[1]:

The compiled official document of calling for public bidding on the Xinsheng Overpass (新生高第七次招標公文) presented by Taipei City government shows signs of forgery.

It shows that some of the words were scratched out and manually replaced with new ones.

But that's not all. In a TV program on Sept 4th ^[2], the KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) displayed the real document she obtained from the Taipei City government. It shows something not seen on the forged version -- the signatures of personnel who signed off the project. That is, the Taipei City government whited out those signatures before they gave it to Councilor Jian, a blatant act to conceal responsible officials.

Comparison of the documents Taipei City sent to the DPP councilor Jian Yu-yen (簡余晏)(left) and that the KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) obtained (right). The Taipei City wiped off signatures of responsible personnel (marked with red) before the doc was sent to Jian.

From the comparison of two versions above, the Taipei City removed the signatures of former section chief Chen Chih-sheng (前科長陳智盛陳智盛), Specialized Commissioner Chi Lan-sheng (專門委員池蘭生), former chief engineer of the department Chang Li-yen (前總工程司章立言) and former commissioner of the New Construction Department Huang Hsi-hsung (前新工處長黃錫薰):

Oh No !!! Scapegoat, any one ?

Those names eventually came out under tremendous pressures. Under heavy critics, the Taipei City mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who is also KMT's candidate for Taipei mayor in the year-end election, organized an anti-corruption task force from within the city government to investigate the potential corruption inside the city government -- that is, a "self-investigation" on the alleged corrupt party by the alleged corrupt party.

In a response to critics that Hau's administration is controlled by a 4-person-gang later, which is the presumed reason for the incompetence in his government, Hau insisted ^[3] that he is the one who made the final decisions:

郝龍斌昨天說，市府決策都是集體智慧、分層負責、尊重專業，過程中有非常多人協助提供意見，但“最後做決策是我自己”

Hau Lung-bin said yesterday that the decision making process of city government is always about collective wisdom, echelon responsibility and respect of expertise. Many share their opinions, but the final decisions are always made by myself.

If that so, then it's obvious who is responsible. Therefore the so-called internal investigation looks like a scapegoat-pinning show to shirk his responsibilities.

Please, don't wake me up!

Meanwhile, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who always made strong anti-corruption claims to show off his determination on cracking down corruptions, keeps a blind eye;

The Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien (王建煊), whose main responsibility is to supervise all levels of governments, keeps a blind eye;

The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office (台北地檢署), which won't hesitate to go full speed in response to any corruption rumor on the opposite party, keeps a blind eye;

Update: Finally, prosecutors raid Taipei City’s construction office. It is 3 weeks after continuous exposure of scandal evidence to the public by DPP's councilors. Why did The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office took so long to take action? Did they give the Taipei City enough time to ~~forge~~ compile/destroy crucial evidence that could implicate higher level officials ? How many documents have already been forged -- like the one shown in this article -- or destroyed already?

Despise that the TIFE scandal has already wasted tax money much more than the amount the former President Chen Shui-bian was accused corruption of, KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) pledged ^[4] that the KMT will support Hau fully no matter what.

Thus, the entire system of Ma Ying-jeou and KMT's anti-corruption functioning went into hibernation, leaving the suspected officials -- who don't have the legal right -- to investigate themselves.

Case closed?

With a stunning efficiency (hey, the year-end election is coming!), mayor Hau announced ^[5] the result of this self investigation -- Chang, Chen and Huang are sent to the prosecutors' office, along with the Join Engineering Consultants (JEC, 昭凌工程顧問), the constructor in charge of all those alleged overpricing projects related to TIFE. No mention of responsibility of Specialized Commissioner Chi Lan-sheng, one of the signatures the Taipei City tried to hide.

The JEC, to which as huge as $13,000,000,000 New Taiwan dollars (~ $400 million US dollars) of tax payers' money went, was previously a KMT-owned property, and now still has the KMT as the largest stock holder. The company was ruled previously as illegal to carry out governmental contracts due to the company's notorious history of bribery and sex seduction, but the Taipei City government ignored the ruling and allowed them to take the contracts anyway. Further more, official documents show that Taipei City government already knew about the overpricing TWO YEARS ago ^[6], but allowed the overpaying to keep going. No matter how you see it, the entire flora scandal in Taipei looks more like a KMT-government-directed money laundering.

Further Readings:

2010.8.27: DPP city councilors file lawsuit against Hau
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/08/27/2003481406

2010.8.28: Hau apologizes over expo, overpass
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/08/28/2003481521

2010.9.5: Overpass task force short on answers
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/09/05/2003482147

2010.9.5: Taipei prosecutors begin investigation into city government overpricing scandal
http://englishnews.ftv.com.tw/read.aspx?sno=DC3DFF7E5A346859F79C0F7FE5CD0076
(Note: this page provides both text in both English and Chinese. While in the English version it says prosecutors start the investigation, it is not mentioned in its Chinese version. So far none of all news in Chinese I know ever mentioned that Taipei District Office started investigating)

Cited:

[1] The Join Engineering Consultants Finally Spoke out! Crucial: Who Gave the Order? Who Signed the Docs? Why the Amount Matched ? (昭淩終於說話了！關鍵問題是：誰是「鈞長」指令？市政會議、工程會報裡誰指示了？公文內簽誰曾看過？金額為何這麼剛好？)
http://www.yuyen.tw/2010/09/blog-post_04.html

[2] Forged Flora Expo Docs With Liquid Paper ? Big Difference In the Official Docs Given to Pro-blue and Pro-green Representatives (花博公文塗立可白?! 綠藍民代調閱差很大!!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HhqUxlEEC4

[3] Getting Rid of Flora Storm, Pan-Blue Pledged Full Support on Hau (擺脫花風暴　泛藍全力挺郝龍斌)
http://www.chinareviewagency.com/doc/1014/3/5/0/101435069.html?coluid=7&kindid=0&docid=101435069

[4] Battle Of Five Cities / Full Support to Hau to the End - King Pu-tsung (五都爭霸／力挺郝龍斌到底！金溥聰：對抗分裂的民進黨)
http://www.nownews.com/2010/09/01/91-2642184.htm

[5] Taipei City Hands Over 3 Officials to Justice For The Xinsheng Overpass Scandal (新生高弊案北市3官員送辦)
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2010/new/sep/5/today-t1.htm

[6] Xinsheng Overpass / Taipei City Government Already Knew About the Overpricing Two Years Ago (新生高工程／報價有問題北市府2年前就知情)
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2010/new/aug/29/today-t1.htm

中國孕婦大量湧進香港產子

2010-09-03T02:36:00.002+08:00

最近一期經濟學人雜誌報導中國孕婦大量湧進香港產子的奇怪現象。去年(2009)一年，中國內地到香港的遊客所生下的小孩，佔了香港當年新生兒的 36%。報導說這個比例還在快速增加中。

該文提到幾個原因：香港不受中國內地的單子政策限制；香港提供了比較好的產婦醫療保健制度；中國聲名狼藉的賄賂文化，使付不起高額賄賂的人民無法獲得好的照料。

此外，香港對新生兒的福利也是很重要的因素：一個新生兒在 12 歲之前，免付一切教育費，而且醫療幾乎完全免費。

當然在香港不止新生兒有比中國好的福利。於是，除了孕婦外，其他居住在中國內地享受比較便宜消費水準的人，也想要到香港分一杯羹。

為了解決這個問題，香港當局規定社會福利的申請者必須證明在香港居住起碼一年。但該規定被法院否決，原因是違反人民自由遷徙的自由。

底下是我對這個消息的看法：

中國近代史上，對邊陲地區包括西藏、新疆等地，每每利用人口的大量遷入來吸收當地資源。反正中國多的是人。現在連香港也要為了中國人的大量湧入而面臨本地資源被外地人截收享用的苦境，等於是辛苦工作讓外地人享福。

那台灣呢？台灣的社會福利跟香港的福利一樣好過中國太多，可以想像中國人會想盡辦法湧進台灣享受福利。而馬英九對中國的瘋狂開放，台灣人的稅金，變成中國人的福利，這是不是正把台灣人辛苦工作的成果拿去「供養」中國人呢？

參考: 無國界的媽媽 ─ 香港的嬰兒潮
Hong Kong's baby-boom - Mamas without borders

Serious Data Leak Puts National Security in Jeopardy

2010-09-01T00:24:00.014+08:00

The Liberty Times reported a serious security leak of the government (外交部員工電郵密碼 Google全都露), in which the private data (names, email addresses and passwords) of more than 2000 personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) was exposed, including those of former and current ministers of MOFA, Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) and Timothy Yang (楊進添), respectively.

The leak was discovered accidentally by a netter when he/she was searching some info with Google and found a document containing all the data mentioned above. The document, with a substring "MOFA" in its filename, is stored on the FTP server of a company, 新寶網通公司, which is responsible for the internet service and security of MOFA.

The report is followed by a blame game: MOFA claimed that it's 新寶網通's fault. 新寶網通 claimed that it must be (that means, they don't know) some hacker(s) hacked into their server and opened it up to the public, otherwise it wouldn't have been accessible through Google (業者說明外交部信箱帳密外洩：備份伺服器被駭).

A side-note here: the document could also be public accessible if the company forgot to set the settings of access privilege of that file. Blaming it to unidentified hackers might make a internet-security company look less guilty. Incompetent, maybe.

This is not the first time the government data was leaked. In May, 2008, tax-payers' private data submitted to Ministry of Finance (財政部) for tax return was exposed (政府不設防報稅資料也曾外洩). MOF blamed that to tax-payers, saying that some commonly used P2P softwares that users had on their computers caused that leak.

That leak was certainly less damaging than the current one that opened up a channel to national secrets.

Both MOFA and 新寶網通 claimed that the leaked emails and passwords were 5~6-year old and were no longer valid, so there's no security problem.

However, the data exposed contains that of both ministers served under Ma Ying-jeou's goverment (that is, within the past 3 years), but not that of former ministers served under Chen Shui-bian's government (廠商︰被搜到是六年前舊資料).

It's obvious that both MOFA and 新寶網通 are lying.

More crucially, evidence provided by journalists showed that people were still able to use some of the leaked data to login to MOFA's system until Aug. 26th, which was 5 days ago.

In response, 新寶網通 says that they don't know why.

Yea, who would have known ? The imagined hackers shouldn't have targeted them in the first place.

How long that data has been leaking? How many ~~users~~ hackers have already made use of that data to sneak into the MOFA internal system? When and how many secret documents fall into outsiders' hands? And to what extent the national security has been jeopardized ?

Since MOFA doesn't want to face the fact that the login data was still valid 5 days ago, should we assume they already determined that there's no need to consider possible security breaks and the case will be closed soon ? After all, we will all feel safe as long as we pretend this never happened.

朱立倫是精神錯亂還是把人民當白痴？

2010-08-19T03:21:00.015+08:00

中國國民黨新北市長候選人朱立倫在他自己的部落格上發表了一篇新聞稿，質疑他的對手蔡英文對當選後做滿任期的承諾：

民進黨主席蔡英文宣布參選新北市長以來，一直不願意正面回答是否會做滿任期的問題，這是不是一開始就打定主意要落跑？

自從蔡英文 5月23日宣布參選後，朱立倫就立刻提出這個質疑，似乎對蔡英文「是不是做滿整個任期」比「有什麼政見」要在意得多。甚且，即使蔡英文已經在 5月25日的記者會 (video)上承諾「一定負責到底」，朱立倫與他的國民黨還是一直咬住這個議題不放，已經快三個月了還在這個議題上死纏爛打，好像非常害怕蔡英文做不滿任期。

更離譜的是，朱立倫這個膽敢拿「承諾不要落跑」當作競選政見的人，本身卻擁有照亮歷史的輝煌落跑記錄。底下這個表格列出朱立倫的從政簡史以及相對應的民選公職任期。注意看那些紅色標出來的日期：

朱立倫從政落跑記錄
朱立倫從政表	立法委員任期	桃園縣長任期
1999/2/1	1999/2/1
第四屆立法委員開始競選縣長	第四屆立法委員
2001/12/20 落跑！！
2001/12/19		2001/12/19
第十四屆桃園縣縣長	2002/1/31	第十四屆縣長
2005/12/19		2005/12/19
2005/12/20		2005/12/20
第十五屆桃園縣縣長
2009/9/9 落跑！！		第十五屆縣長
2009/9/10
行政院副院長		2009/12/19
2010/5/17
辭職競選新北市長

朱立倫落跑了兩次：一次是 2001/12/20 立委當了一半跑去選桃園縣長。立法院的正式記錄不但寫得很清楚，還特別用紅字標出他「中途離職」（看本文附錄 [1]）。他當桃園縣長後，又在 2009/9/9 任期中第二次落跑去當行政院副院長。事實上，他的從政生崖中必須對選民負責的民選公職，就只有立法委員與桃園縣長兩個位置，但他兩個都給它落跑，落跑率百分之百。

為什麼一個有這麼完美落跑紀錄的人，竟然認為他有那個臉來質疑別人「可能」會落跑？

他的文章中又說：

對於蔡英文競選總部副總幹事鄭文燦指稱國民黨新北市長參選人朱立倫曾有三次落跑紀錄，朱立倫上午表示，他是在立委任期屆滿後才參與縣長選舉，兩任縣長八年做到只剩不到九十天的任期才轉任副院長，而副院長根本不是任期制，他實在佩服民進黨硬拗的功力。

啊？原來他竟認為他是在立委任期屆滿後才參與縣長選舉的？

在這個影音新聞中, 朱立倫微笑面對鏡頭，厚顏無恥地說出這樣的話來：

我是立委屆滿去改選的時候，一起選縣長的。

看著鏡頭，臉不紅氣不喘，公然扭曲事實的硬凹功夫，不但令人嘔吐，更令人質疑 ── 難道，他真的相信過去那些可以輕易查證的事實是如他所幻想的一樣發生的嗎？如果這樣，那表示他是活在幻覺裡，他的精神狀態恐怕已經錯亂失常。

他同時又強調當桃園縣長他只不過提早三個月落跑而已。提早三個月落跑不算落跑？把人民當白痴嗎？

朱立倫現在正在競選期間，也就是說，正在「有求於民」的時候。一個政治人物，在這種時刻，對可以輕易查證的事實都可以這樣公然對人民瞎掰，那等到他手中握有權力、不再有求於民的時候，對於民眾很難查證的公權力運用，他有可能誠實面對人民嗎？

新北市將會是台灣第一大都市，新北市人真該好好想想，把手中神聖的一票浪費在這種候選人身上，最後會不會害了自己。

附錄

[1] 立法院The 正式記錄(截圖1,截圖2)，明顯標註朱立倫「中途離職」：

[2] 朱立倫自己的網站上的自我介紹清楚寫明他是在2001年，也就是立法委員任期的前一年，就已經就職桃園縣長。

[3] 朱立倫的硬凹影片：綠批落跑3次朱嗆勿胡扯硬拗－民視新聞

[4] 朱立倫質疑蔡英文的新聞稿 (截圖).

Delusional Eric Chu and KMT's Suicidal Campaign Strategy

2010-08-18T01:36:00.012+08:00

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)'s New Taipei City mayor candidate, Eric Chu (朱立倫), posted a news release on his own blog, questioning why his counter part, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)'s candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), doesn't promise clearly to finish the full term of mayor if she gets elected,

民進黨主席蔡英文宣布參選新北市長以來，一直不願意正面回答是否會做滿任期的問題，這是不是一開始就打定主意要落跑？
Since she announced to campaign for the New Taipei City mayor, DPP's president Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文) never answered directly if she will finish the full term once she gets elected. Isn't she intending to run away in the first place ?

Chu has been hammering at this topic ever since Tsai announced her campaign on May 23rd (2010). In fact, asking Tsai to promise the full term -- but not what Tsai has to offer for the New Taipei City -- seems to be Chu's major concern since day one.

Tsai already responded, on May 25th, in a press conference (video) that she will "be responsible to the end" if she is elected. That doesn't seem to slow down KMT's attack on this issue at all.

But that's not the issue here. Chu, who has the audacity to question other's commitment, is a politician with outstanding records of quitting his public service positions in the middle of the terms. As shown in the table below, the first column is Chu's political service record; the 2nd: the official Legislator term, and the 3rd: the official commissioner term. Note the dates marked with red.

朱立倫從政落跑記錄 Eric Chu's Runaway Record First column: Chu's political service record; 2nd: Official Legislator term; 3rd: Office commissioner term. TCC: Taoyuan County Commissioner
朱立倫從政表 Chu's history	立法委員任期 Legislator term	桃園縣長任期 TCC Term
1999/2/1	1999/2/1
第四屆立法委員 The 4th Legislator 開始參選競選縣長 Start campaigning for TCC	第四屆立法委員
2001/12/20 Quit!	4th Legislator
2001/12/19		2001/12/19
第十四屆桃園縣縣長 14th TCC	2002/1/31	第十四屆縣長 14th TCC
2005/12/19		2005/12/19
2005/12/20		2005/12/20
第十五屆桃園縣縣長 15th TCC
2009/9/9 Quit!		第十五屆縣長
2009/9/10		15th TCC
行政院副院長 Vice Premier		2009/12/19
2010/5/17
辭職競選新北市長 Resign to campaign for New Taipei City

Chu broke away from his commitments twice -- the first on 2001/12/20 when he quit the legislator (see the official record cited in [1] in the end of article) to take up the post of Taoyuan County commissioner (TCC), and the 2nd on 2009/9/9 when he quit his TCC post to be sworn in to the vice premier position. In his political career, he served only two public-elected positions (legislator and TCC), yet he dumped them both.

Why does a person of such a record think that he is in a position to question others' commitment ?

The news release I cited in the beginning might shed some light. Chu wrote:

對於蔡英文競選總部副總幹事鄭文燦指稱國民黨新北市長參選人朱立倫曾有三次落跑紀錄，朱立倫上午表示，他是在立委任期屆滿後才參與縣長選舉，兩任縣長八年做到只剩不到九十天的任期才轉任副院長，而副院長根本不是任期制，他實在佩服民進黨硬拗的功力。

In response to Tsai's deputy campaign chief Cheng Wen-tsang's (鄭文燦) claim that the KMT's New Taipei City mayoral candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) has a history of leaving his public service posts three times before finishing his term (when he previously held the positions of KMT legislator, Taoyuan County commissioner (TCC) and the vice premier), Eric Chu said in the morning that he finished his legislator term before he started campaigning for the Taoyuan County commissioner , and when he left the commissioner for the position of vice premier, their was only 90 days left in his 8-year term of Taoyuan County commissioner. As for leaving the vice premier for the current campaign, he said there's no "term" for vice premier position. He said that he is indeed impressed by DPP's fact-twisting ability.

He argued, and wrote clearly in black and white, that he finished his legislator term before he started campaigning for the Taoyuan County commissioner !! In a video, he smiled at the camera and delivered that outright lie without a blink of eye:

我是立委屆滿去改選的時候，一起選縣長的。
I campaigned TCC after I finished my legislator term, at the same time as the re-election of legislators.

The as-a-matter-of-factly attitude of fact-twisting is truly mind-boggling. Did he really believe that's what happened ?

He also argued that "leaving the post only 3 months earlier before the end of the term" doesn't count as leaving the post earlier. With that kind of twisting, he went on to attack DPP being fact-twisting.

Now we know at least one thing --- he is probably in such a delusional state of total denial to the fact that he did run away from his duty twice. When a person is so far out of the touch of reality, his mental health is in serious doubt.

KMT's Suicidal Campaign Strategy

But this might not be as simple as a single politician going delusional. The KMT campaign is handled by KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), Ma Ying-jeou's most trusted spin doctor and the master mind behind all KMT's campaign strategy. Chu's move has to be approved by King. In fact, Chu's delusional statement echoes King's, which was made on the same day.

It triggers some pondering on KMT's campaign approach: Chu has a complete record of breaking away, yet Tsai has none. So Chu is like "using own weakness to attack others' strength." Isn't that suicidal? The more Chu chases this subject, the more people will be reminded of Chu's own record of dumping his commitments, not to mention that this attack is delivered in a manner of Chu going delusional. Chu's credibility will be further crashed, and his mental health will be questioned. Both would seriously jeopardize his chance of winning the New Taipei City election.

Why on earth would the KMT adopt this stupid and apparently suicidal strategy to trash her own candidate ?

It is even more suspicious if we take into account that Chu is considered Ma Ying-jeou's successor in the KMT. Not only is it the consensus of public opinion, but also Ma's move of making him the vice premier is considered a pre-arrangement for KMT's future. Sacrificing KMT's next generation leader is like eradicating KMT's own lineage.

Previously I pointed out that the KMT plans to use admitting incompetence on all fronts as their campaign strategy. In which I asked why the KMT would adopt a self-trashing approach for the year-end campaign. Chu's move described here pushes the KMT one step further along the suicidal path.

But, why ? Do Ma and King have a priority other than winning the Battle-Of-Five-Cities - the year-end election that is considered the most critical for Ma if he wants to win the 2012 presidential election, such that they don't mind sacking KMT's own lineage ?

References

[1] The official record of Legislation Yuan on Chu's profile . Chu's mid-term runaway is highlighted in red on the official site. Magnified here:

[2] Chu's profile on his own website, on which clearly written that he switched from legislator to TCC on 2001.

[3] Chu's lying video: 綠批落跑3次朱嗆勿胡扯硬拗－民視新聞 in which Chu delivered fact-twisting statements shamelessly.

[4] Chu wrote in black and white his shameless fact-twisting on his own blog.

[5] Chu's wiki (in Chinese). Note that in Chu's English wiki page, his legislator term is not listed.

政治人物是人民實現理想的「工具」

2010-08-12T04:37:00.000+08:00

楊秋興叛黨有感

政治人物是人民實現理想的「工具」。

自製書桌，不同的步驟需要不同的工具。有時需要鋸子，有時需要鐵鎚，有時需要磨光機。

我們從木板開始，每進入到下一個階段的時候，就必須換一個工具。我們不能換了階段、有了新需求之後，還把舊的工具抓在手上，否則我們就沒有手來拿新的工具以應付新的階段任務。

或者，如果我們工作了一半，手上的工具壞掉了，我們只要換個新的工具繼續完成我們的工作就好，不必去為壞掉的工具感傷。

面對政治人物亦可如是觀 ─ 適合我們任務的就用，不適合我們任務的就換掉。施明德、許信良等，都曾經對我們的理想「有用」過，但現在不是壞掉就是過時。我們必須換掉這些壞工具，才不會影響工作的進度。

對過去的「工具」這樣看待，對現在與未來的「工具」，也不妨這樣看待。

台灣沒有「不要跟誰談統一」的問題 ─── 解析李瑞木的「不反中」論述 (1)

2010-08-03T13:03:00.005+08:00

台獨前輩李瑞木(Raymond Lee)在最近一系列文章中對台派提出「反共不反中」的建議。我將試著針對其論述提出我的看法。此文由話題背景談到他的整個系列的一個最重要的根據。

經過幾十年的民主奮鬥，台灣現在已經有絕大部分人具有台灣意識。近幾年所有民調顯示，多數台灣人認為台灣跟中國是不同的兩個國家，而且台灣人不願意當中國人。但這個成熟的台灣意識並沒有反映在台派選舉的得票率上，造成一個「多數台灣人不願意當中國人，但卻寧可讓親中政客來管理他們」的荒謬現象。

幾位作者，包括 Raymond、李中志^[2]與筆者^[3]，針對這個問題提出：台派必須放棄以前那種鄙視或敵視非泛綠選民的態度，才有可能吸引更多非泛綠選民。Raymond 的系列文章則更進一步將其推展到「不必反中國人、中國文化以及中國這個國家」，認為這樣可以讓台派得到更多非泛綠的支持。

他首先在「北京話與臺灣的中間選民」一文中^[1]，以北京話為例說明語言敵視態度的不必要。我認同該文的主旨（亦即，不必排斥中文），但不認同該文的前提：

臺灣有 80% 以上的人並不願與中國共產黨談統一，很多人也並不支持國民黨。可是為什麼民進黨的得票率只能在 35 – 45% 之間徘徊？其中一個重要原因之一是：有不少台灣河洛人對外省人、中國人、中國(漢)文化、或北京話的敵視有關。

這前提出現在 Raymond 這一系列文章作為每篇文章起頭，有時甚至同一文中出現兩次，甚至在回應讀者反應中重複，可知這段話是 Raymond 整個思考架構的最重要前提。

然而，這最重要的前提的開頭第一句話就大有問題，因為它暗示了：「台灣人不是不想與中國統一，只是不想與共產黨談而已」。

前面提過，多數台灣人不想當中國人，也認為台灣跟中國是兩個國家，亦即，台灣人根本不願與中國統一。在這方面的民調，據我所知並沒有（或絕大部分沒有）問台灣人「是不是願意與共產黨談統一」這個問題。

台灣人既然拒絕統一，就不可能有「談統一」的意願；既然連談的意願都沒有，就更談不上「跟誰談」。因此，「台灣人不願與共產黨談統一」的說法只能是個主觀的想像，而非忠實地描述多數台灣人「根本不願統一」的意願。以脫離現實的主張作為前提，往後推論與結論是否還能合邏輯，值得進一步分析。

讀者若參考李中志與筆者的說法（比較畫線的部分），對我所說就可以了然於胸：

李中志：『據近年可信的民調，台灣有85％以上的人並不願與中國統一，也有很強的台灣意識，可是以維護台灣主權為最高指導原則的民進黨，為什麼得票率只能在35％到45％之間徘徊？』

Echo:『現在民調顯示，已經有八成的民眾認定台灣跟中國不是同一國（台灣人民既不愚蠢也沒有不覺醒！），但是這些「認定台灣是有別於中國的獨立國家」的民眾，投票時恐怕有一大半不會投給台灣派的候選人。』

參考文章：

[1] 北京話與臺灣的中間選民 (李瑞木）
[2] 綠營得票障礙在綠營（李中志）
[3] 台派知識份子的責任：建構一個「屬於所有台灣住民」的全民台灣 (Echo)

Premier Wu Got Sued for Calling Independence Supporters Idiots

2010-07-28T00:47:00.023+08:00

How can we expect harmony in a society if the Premier
feels no shame on making a society polarization remark?
~ Echo ~

A lawsuit will go to the court on Aug. 10th in which some Taiwanese sue Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) for calling Taiwan Independence supporters "idiots."

The incident happened on December, 8th, 2009, when Wu talked about cross-strait relationship in either a speech or an interview. See the section starting from 1:13 in this video.

What came out of his mouth is:

「你統人家，沒能力；被統，不願意。你搞獨立，也沒那個本事啦，搞了內部也分裂，外部可能有危機。只有不負責任的，或者白痴，他才會覺得說應該搞一個獨立國。」

You don't have the ability to unite(conquer) them (China); You don't want to be united(conquered); And to seek the independent, c'mon, you are not capable. If you do it, you will split the country from inside, and potentially create troubles from outside. Only those who are irresponsible, or idiots, will think that we need to build an independent country.

Wu's effort of linking "independence" to "idiots" angered many, including an "egg protest" when he attended a computer expo (吳敦義蒞臨資訊展場民眾丟雞蛋抗議 ). Not long after that (either the same day or next day), he attempted to dismiss the public rage with a clarification, but basically repeated what he had said in its entirety, including the word "idiots".

Immediately, he was questioned by a journalist on his reappeared "idiots" remarks. Obviously enraged, he raised his voice and talked back with his arm waving and pointing to the journalist:

"Irresponsible OR idiots ! Irresponsible OR idiots !! When I said you are either male OR female, I don't mean to say you are female."

Quite a delicate way to smuggle a society polarizing remark in his talk.

In an earlier article that I talked about the responsibility of Taiwanese intellectuals, I argued:

『任何以「某種人格模式」為標準，將某個特定族群「一竿子打翻一群人」地鎖定在這個單一的人格模式裡加以批判的宣傳方式，對台灣社會都是一種嚴重的傷害。』

Any behavior that applies a specific pattern of some individuals as a criteria to criticize the entire group by locking the entire group into that pattern is a serious offense to the society harmony.

Wu showed us how that is done.

For the court preceding, some Taiwanese send out a notice of press invitation:

“控告吳敦義”重要新聞採訪通知(1)

　　各位新聞媒體女士、先生們大家好，有一則重要新聞請你們大家來採訪報導，台北地方法院將在2010年8月10日上午10時25分，於3F21法庭開庭審理，前建國黨秘書長：高金郎，前決策委員蔡金龍對行政院院長吳敦義及總統馬英九侵權行為損害賠償求償案件，

　　台北地方法院當日是第一次言詞辯論庭。本案共同原告高金郎、蔡金龍，會對吳敦義等提出損害賠償請求之訴，仍是因為吳敦義曾在2009年12月7、8間公然指摘及傳述說，除非不負責任或白癡，才會覺得要搞一個獨立的國家。因此本案共同原告高金郎、蔡金龍先徵得台獨老前輩史明、鄭自財、黃華、楊東傑…等人的同意後，在2009年12月29日向台北地方法院提出損害賠償請求之訴。原告請求法院判決策吳敦義必須登四大報道歉，當法院決定在本年8月10日上午10時25分開庭審理本案，的消息傳出後各界聲援熱列，除台獨人士連中間派人士也都願意具名聲援，最可貴的是如刺蔣案要角；鄭自財。前國策顧問黃華。美國3F人士楊東傑醫師。世界柯、蔡宗親總會前秘書長蔡忠雄。本土社團集合體台灣國民會議召集人：劉重義。公投護台聯盟總召集人；蔡丁貴教授。台灣聯合國協進會理事長；羅榮光牧師。政治受難者總會前會長劉金獅。國際知名教授台大教授；陳永昌等。共有本土社團及幹部，本土政治團體，各界人士，前建國黨同志總共有72人同意具名聲援本案共同原告高金郎、蔡金龍對吳敦義損害賠償請求之訴。由此可知吳敦義侮罵台獨人士白癡，是絕對的觸犯眾怒，因此才會有那麼多人願意聲援。

　　在本年8月10日上午開庭結束後我們將由本土社團集合體，台灣國民會議召集人；劉重義主持，在11時30分於台灣北社辦公室召開對吳敦義提告，新聞記者說明會。到時請各位媒體女士、先生們到場採訪報導。
台灣北社地址：台北市青島東路5號2F

※本次具名聲援的72位人士，只是原告之日內連絡所同意之人士，只要消息－傳播出去相信會有眾多的人士再具名聲援。

本案原告連絡電話：高金郎 (02)2838-6722‧0915-883-909

蔡金龍 (02)2906-7759‧0927-886-117

本案義務協助人：紀文清 0932-192-142

徐國昌0932-140-686

義務連絡人：李明憲 0937-064-024

中區連絡人：張志梅 0912-969-282

南區連絡人：李政憲0928-162-668

※本案雖沒有委任律師提告，但是原告蔡金龍，法律協助人紀永寬，藍大山。義務協助人：紀文清、徐國昌等人都法律科班出身，因此沒有法律困難之問題。

國際印象 ─ 台派棄守的戰場

2010-07-24T00:31:00.005+08:00

我個人對台派在美國刊登台獨宣言廣告的成效一直有疑慮。

從國際角度來看，台灣已經是一個民主國家，人民已經可以運用投票來決定自己的前途。雖然買票行為還是有，但是大致上民主程序已經就位。

以這樣的民主國家，有一些人跑到國外登廣告做一個「獨立宣言」，外國人恐怕會感覺很奇怪：民主程序既然已經就位，要獨立就在國內投票就好了，為什麼跑到國外告訴我們？我們能做什麼呢？我們能幫台灣人投票嗎？

外國人當然不能幫台灣人投票。如果說我們需要國際人士的幫忙對馬政府施壓，那我們必須用事件說服他們，而不是平白無故就要人支持。我們必須把每天在台灣上演的不公不義傳達出去。

但是，我們並沒有充分運用有限的資源讓國際人士瞭解馬政府底下那些不公不義的荒唐事件。台派的英語管道，只有 Tapiei Times 及少數幾個歐美人士的部落格。這些管道即使竭盡全力做到死，向海外傳達的也僅只是點狀的新聞大綱而已。相對於中國國民黨盡心地在經營國際印象，台派完全放棄這個重要的戰場。

而台美人是有機會浸潤於東西方文化、同時具備英文華文的閱讀與寫作能力的少數台灣人，照理應該是執行這個宣傳管道的不二群體。但是台美人完全忽略自己可以、應該扮演的角色。

於是，國際媒體別無選擇。他們只能靠著國民黨餵給他們的宣傳內容來看台灣。這種情況下，國際人士眼裡，台灣只是國民黨告訴他們的台灣，而不是台灣的真相。

我們把台灣的詮釋權完全讓給對手，還能肖想能得到什麼支持呢？

這樣的台灣印象的國民，在美國登獨立宣言，就好像民主的美國，有些美國人跑到台灣報紙上登一個「加州獨立宣言」的廣告一樣，會達到什麼效果，實在令人懷疑。

台派，尤其是海外台灣人，實在應該多花一點資源，培養一些外文寫作的人才，用客觀的、專業的新聞報導的方式，不斷地、持續地、腳踏實地地把台灣的真相每天傳達出去。只有這樣才能用真相說服國際人士，如此才能掌握「台灣的國際印象」這個戰場。

「台獨」是一個與生活態度無關的政治口號嗎？

2010-07-11T09:14:00.000+08:00

最近跟幾個朋友在討論一些台派人士在非關政治的日常生活中的言行。

有一次，跟家人去同鄉會聽獨派大佬辜寬敏的演講，席間講到蔡英文、呂秀蓮，他又重提那個「穿裙子」的說法來嘲笑女性政治人物。他把侮辱當笑話講，台下聽講的台灣同鄉竟然一起笑得很開心。我跟家人舉目四顧，全場只有我們一家沒有在笑，坐在那裡好像外星人。

我無法置信，這些台灣同鄉也是母親生下來的，他們也有老婆、女兒，侮辱女性就等於侮辱了他們自己的家人，當然也侮辱了他們自己。但當有人公然做這種侮辱時，他們竟然可以跟著笑得心花怒放。

我們在那裡如坐針壇，很快地在全場笑聲中匆忙離開會場。

另外一次，有一個名人從台灣來，我們去聽演講、吃飯，然後大家一起拍照。有一個資格應該可以在學術領域當會長的大佬級人物（也就是說，應該很受人尊敬的那種等級的人），跟他老婆比較晚到，大家都已經排好準備拍了，他們只好站在旁邊。

正要拍時，站在第一排中間的一位小姐，看到拍照的人似乎不太知道怎麼使用相機，走上前兩步去教他怎麼用。這時，這對大佬級夫妻突然間一個箭步從旁邊衝到前面正中間，搶了那位小姐的位置。那位小姐回頭，發現位置已經被大佬佔去，只好很無奈地站到旁邊去。更扯的是，這位大佬個子不矮，站在第一排正中間把後面的人都擋住，他也不管。

我在一旁看得目瞪口呆，不敢相信自己的眼睛。

我跟朋友提到這個經驗之後才知道，類似這種搶鏡頭搶到變成野蠻人的行徑，好像在台派早已經不是新聞。

這些生活細節上的荒謬演出看得越多，不得不開始反省，台獨是不是只是跟生活無關的一種口號，一種「規定別人要照某種框框過日子」、「讓自己心裡很舒服而已」的政治口號。

有時候，我們會看到一些類似「台獨應有的素養」、「台灣人應有的認識」。。。等等文章在教別人怎麼樣當台獨，怎麼樣當台灣人。

我總會想：也許應該先從「怎麼做人」開始吧？

KMT's 5-City Campaign Strategy: Admit Incompetence on All Fronts

2010-06-26T02:50:00.007+08:00

In the year-end election of Five Cities (五都選舉), the common perception was that the KMT will take the 3 on the north (Taipei, New Taipei City, and Taichung), and DPP will secure the 2 to the south (Tainan and Kaohsiung). KMT's original estimation was 3 easy victories, with the possibility of winning 4 or even 5.

The recent development, however, displays a dramatic twist of trend, indicating that the possibility of "KMT losing all 5" might not be too far fetched.

The signs are showing up on a daily or even hourly basis (see how exciting Taiwan's politics is). Public opinion polls from various sources -- including those from KMT's own, and that from blue media -- say DPP reaches a tie or even winning significantly in New Taipei City and Taipei, and is catching up quickly in Taichung. In Taiwan's politics, a tie in polls so early would mean that KMT will lose by ~20% in the real elections.

The alarming sign forced KMT to call for an emergency meeting on June, 19 (北北都選情拉警報馬今密商).

At the mean time, KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), who was considered Ma Ying-jiou's last life-saving card and was hired to manage KMT's election campaigns in December, 2009, losing every single election since then, starts to spread news that he is not the one in charge (金溥聰自認非操盤手只是總協調), paving the way for "it's not my fault" for the elections 5 months from now.

On the other side of aisle, DPP's candidate for Taipei Mayor, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) is said to already leading KMT's candidate, the incumbent Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍彬), by an undisclosed large margin in KMT's internal poll. DPP's chairperson and candidate for New Taipei City, Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文) is on an unstoppable speed train to a wider and wider popularity. People are saying that DPP's "Tsai Era" has come (蘋論：民進黨蔡英文時代來臨) or Taiwan's "Tsai Era" is here (台灣的蔡英文時代來臨). She is ranked #1 in the popularity in Taiwan's facebook in the category of political figure (蔡英文臉書facebook政治人氣榜奪冠 ). Some say that they would move to New Taipei City such that they can play a role in this era by casting a vote to Tsai (小英效應). Positive comments are coming from both green and blue camps, including some blue media that used to avoid positive news of green camp.

In contrary, her counter part, KMT's chairperson Ma Ying-jeou, whose degree of extraordinary incompetence is still deeply impressed in the mind of Taiwanese (in spite that he is still the favorite of many international media), is very very quiet from all these heating developments. Not very much spotlight is focusing on him, as though that he has disappeared. In previous local elections, Ma was seen as a plague of election (票房毒藥) many KMT candidates chose to avoid.

Now, among all these down turns, KMT hired Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) as the campaign adviser on June, 22 (BCC boss to serve as KMT adviser for year-end polls).

Jaw is one of the cofounders of New Party - a party that is categorized as "red" in Taiwan's "green-middle-blue-red" political spectrum. That is, it is even more pro-China than KMT in the blue camp is.

In a fast evolving political environment, people quickly learn that a common ground in the middle that fits most of the people is the best way to go. Forces on the extreme sides of the political spectrum would quickly fade out from the political battle field.

It was the fate of New Party, and that of Jaw's, too, who retired from the political arena after he lost to Chen Shui-bian in Taipei Mayor election in 1994.

Therefore, the re-appearing of a New Party heavyweight like Jaw to advise KMT on campaign indicates a desperate need of KMT to secure its own - and often extreme - supporters. It is a sign that KMT is losing blood in an unimaginable scale on all fronts, to an extent that they can hardly secure their own traditional base, let alone to spare attention on the middle ground.

The extent of KMT's desperation might be even much deeper if we take into account Jaw's past relationship with KMT. In the 1994 election mentioned above, Jaw insisted in competing with KMT's then incumbent Mayor Thomas Huang (黃大洲) and DPP's Chen Shui-bian even he was warned that he could split blue voters. Shortly prior to the election, that possibility suddenly came into his mind, so he asked his supporters to vote for Huang instead. But it was too late. Chen won (Chen 44%, Jaw 30%, Huang 26%, from here), in an election that marked the first in Taiwan's history in which the split of blue camp directly contributes to blue's loss.

That is, Jaw's act practically sabotaged the election and caused the KMT to lose. At least that's what people have in mind, and possibly that's why he had to retire.

Now, KMT is asking a guy who sabotaged their victory before to run the election for them. This shows how desperate KMT is.

With their history, the outcome of this desperate move might be in serious doubt. Jaw announced that he would "use his experience running in Taipei mayoral and councilor elections" to plan KMT's campaign. Again ?

Lets see ... on 6/24, two days after his appointment, he announced his campaign plan for the KMT (趙少康:蘇郝民調打平郝就是輸). He started with a statement that according to the current opinion polls, KMT already lost in New Taipei City and Taipei.

He then pulled out his 3-step rescue plan for KMT's Taipei candidate Hau Lung-bin:

1. Tear down the bicycle path on Dunhua North Road and the bus path on Zhongxiao East East Road （拆除敦北自行車道、忠孝東路公車專用道）.

The bus path on Zhongxiao East Road is one of the things Ma Ying-jeou bragged about for his "achievement" in his 8-year Taipei Mayorship prior to Hau. The path is badly and carelessly designed like most, if not all, of Ma's major management plans are, and has turned into something that brought inconvenience to and complaints from citizens.

So the first thing Jaw suggests Hau to do is to tear down Ma's "achievement", in a way showing how incompetent Ma is, hoping to reflect that Hau's current bad performance is not entirely his fault.

The indication in his statement might not be far from the fact. In an earlier interview, DPP's Taipei city councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) revealed that Hau's team in Taipei city was very angry about Ma. She described that Hau and his team couldn't do any thing forward because they have to spend full time cleaning up all those messes Ma created and left.

But for a KMT-hired strategist to put "trashing Ma" as the first step of campaign plan ?

2. Hau should admit that he didn't do well in the past 3 years so he can beg people for the second chance (承認過去三年做得不好，要選民再給一次機會).

Urrhh ... just how on earth is that gonna sell ?

3. "Effect of chicks-boost-hen" -- asking for the endorsement from the city councilor candidates in order to boost Hau's popularity (尋求議員候選人支持，以達到「小雞帶母雞」的效果)。

In Taiwan, when we apply the term "hen-boosts-chicks" (母雞帶小雞) to the politics, it means that a candidate of higher level elections (the hen, like city mayors, etc) is so popular that he/she can boost the popularity of lower level candidates (the chicks, like city councilors). In that case, lower candidates would fight for the spotlight of having a photo with "the hen".

On the other hand, higher level candidates who are so unpopular will be considered "plague of election", or "toxin of voting" (like Ma ying-jeou is now if he chooses to be a candidate) so the lower level candidates will avoid him/her at all cost.

What Jaw suggests now is to reverse the process to "chicks-boost-hen", asking lower level candidates to endorse an unpopular high level candidate whom they would otherwise avoid.

The meaning is clear: Hau is so disliked by the people, not only can't he play the "hen" role but also he has to rely on lower level candidates to risk their own elections to win.

Again, just how on earth is that gonna work ?

So, a summary of Jaw's plan:

1. Emphasize how incompetent Ma is in order to argue Hau is not that guilty;

2. Emphasize how incompetent Hau is in order to bag for the 2nd chance;

3. Admit how unpopular Hau is so he needs to ask KMT's lower level candidates to sacrifice in order to save his own ass.

Interestingly, this strategy of "incompetence admissions" is announced to the public, not delivered in an internal meeting.

Note:
Similar observations came up today. Both articles (in Chinese) cover much broader range of "phenomena" than mine :

五都選舉：國民黨大勢已去
(Five City Election: KMT's momentum is gone)

五都選戰--金馬指揮部亮紅燈國民黨可能兵敗五都
(Five City Election: Red Alarm in King-Ma Commanding Center, KMT Could Lose All Five)

五都選舉國民黨恐將策反南二都

2010-06-19T11:15:00.004+08:00

自從蔡英文宣布競選新北市之後，國民黨一時之間陣腳大亂。接下來的操作，我感覺有一個趨勢，是他們正採取「北三都全力競選，南二都全力策反」的佈局。亦即，南二都國民黨將以策反為主要戰略。

以南台灣的政治生態而言，國民黨競選勝選的機會微乎極微。以日前剛舉辦的低層地方選舉來看，很多國民黨籍參選人甚至不敢用國民黨的招牌，而選擇以無黨籍的身份參選。

亦即，國民黨的招牌在南部有如瘟疫一般大家避之唯恐不及。在這種民眾對國民黨普遍反感的情況下，如果國民黨投入在南部競選，不但是浪費資源，更可能刺激民眾而反而越競越差。

這種未戰已敗的惡劣局勢下，國民黨唯一可能的有效戰略，就是「佯攻」，亦即「表面上看起來有在跟對手競，但實際操作上卻放空攻擊，而採迂迴的藉綠打綠」。

可能的實際操作步驟上的要點，則是：

1. 避免跟對手硬幹，用一分實力虛晃一招稍微批評一下就好；

2. 用兩分實力來誇大自己的好處；

3. 剩下七分實力，則全部用在挑撥離間，譬如：

不斷讚美許添財、楊秋興兩人是人才，甚至不惜說兩人「比國民黨候選人還優秀」；
以正義者之姿替兩人抱不平，既可藉此栽贓民進黨，又可將敗者的不甘慢慢烹煮加熱使其不會退溫；
還必須不時透過媒體製造失敗者欲「脫黨參選」的謠言；

不管當事人公開或私底下有沒有講過什麼，未來這幾個月應該會有更多這種挑撥離間的新聞出來。

在國民黨這種佈局下，許、楊兩人的公開表態，以及什麼時候公開表態，對泛綠的團結就變得很重要。如果放著這種挑撥言論繼續燒，燒到成為某種「勢」的時候，那時再澄清恐怕為時已晚。

許、楊是政治老手，對國民黨這個局的走向，以及這個時間點的關鍵性應該很清楚。

至於民進黨以及其他泛綠支持者的態度，也會有決定性的影響。不管國民黨把許、楊兩人捧得多高，把不甘誇到多大，把謠言造得滿天飛，那也只能算是把局佈好。他們能操作的也只到這裡。

接下來，國民黨需要泛綠的幫忙來把佈好的局演成一個「勢」，那就是泛綠將不加思考地跳進這個局裡，順著這個局的戲碼來演，直覺地對當事人產生憤怒、不滿、甚至發動言論圍剿來臭罵、追殺。

這是泛綠的慣性作為，而一旦發生，就會跟滾雪球一樣越越大，滾到成為如山倒海般的「反對當事人的勢」。一旦這個「勢」形成，被攻擊的當事人將會感覺到：泛綠已經將自己逼到絕路，除了「反」以外別無選擇。

歷史上應該有不少這樣的例子：利用敵人的慣性佈一個局，讓敵人自己跳進去炒作，炒到敵人把自己人逼反。

國民黨能把阿扁當神主牌，主要還是泛綠這個「跟局的慣性」，就好像哪裡癢很自然的就會去抓癢一樣無法克制。所以國民黨每有急難時就拆開這個多年來就佈好的扁局，按一下按鈕，泛綠自己就會跳出來解救國民黨。

因此，我有充分的信心，國民黨南二都這個策反的局，至少「搧動泛綠」這一部份，一定會成功。

也就是說，許、楊必須克服的，除了心理上對敗戰的調適以及國民黨的吹捧之外，最關鍵的還必須忍受、克服泛綠自己人的殘酷無情的攻擊。

這將使得他們的處境更加艱辛，畢竟泛綠高人栽在類似的局中的不在少數，而期望泛綠能克制「跟局的衝動」是遙不可及的。因此如果兩人能夠克服這些而破除國民黨南二都策反泛綠的局，那將真的是非常難能可貴。

Ma to Send More Military Instructors to Campus -- Elementary Schools Included

2010-06-05T13:49:00.002+08:00

When I was educated decades ago back in Taiwan, military instructors (MIs) stationed in campus represented the potential terror of KMT's political persecution. They monitored not only the behaviors but also the thoughts and the words of students'. A summon by the MIs to their offices was the most fearful in the mind of many students. Some of us had the shocking experiences of realizing that MIs in the campus held your file of loyalty records -- records of loyalty not only to the country but also to the KMT, even if you were not KMT members.

As Taiwan went on to a speedy march toward democracy, during which the KMT government stepped down in 2000, the new government led by DPP worked hard to remove campus MIs with a policy "military instructors out of the campus" (軍訓教官退出校園). The plan was to stop adding new position and stop refilling opening ones, thus reduces the total amount of MIs gradually until there's none.

Unfortunately, after Ma Ying-jeou took power in 2008, Ma government turned that policy 180 degrees around. Not only the opening of old positions are re-filled, but also the number of positions will be largely increased.

Last year (2009) I talked about the intention of Ma Ying-jeou's regime in this regard (Ma Govt to Extend Thought Control to Elementary Schools):

in the name of "defense education," Ma Ying-jeou government's Ministry of Education's Department of Students' Military Training (DSMT, 軍訓處) is amending a "Plan of Improvement and Adjustment of Military Training Officers Missions in High Schools" (my translation of 高級中等學校軍訓教官工作精進與調整方案) to include junior high and elementary schools into the radar of their thought control ((員額不減教官擬轉進國中小).

DSMT denied such a plan, despite it is clearly written in their web document, which was removed in 24 hrs after its announcement invited rage from the public (see my previous article mentioned above for links). But at the same time Minister of Education admitted that military instructors will be sent to elementary schools for nothing more than "teaching Taiwanese kids lessons" of "national defense."

The subject seems to quiet down since then. However, behind the spot light, the turned-around policy proceeds as planned. This year, Ma regime will station 303 more military instructors, increasing the total number by ~ 10% (全民國防教育將起跑教官暴增).

If you think that Ma Ying-jeou is bringing Taiwan back to the era of white terror when Chiang KS was in power, take a deep breath --- in the Chiang KS era, the campus MIs didn't go to the elementary schools to bother kids. Only senior high schools and colleges were subjected to the monitor of MIs.

Thus, Ma Ying-jeou didn't stop at turning the policy of reducing campus MIs around. He took a step further to make sure that the military control on Taiwanese students starts from the elementary level.

蔡英文的宏觀視野與台灣全民的新出路

2010-05-29T05:21:00.002+08:00

民進黨主席蔡英文在過去這兩年的異常低調與謹言慎行，常被泛綠支持者視為軟弱無能，因此不免令人懷疑她到底想把民進黨帶到哪裡。

但她近幾天卻一反常態，開始大膽挑戰中華民國外來政權（『蔡英文：中華民國是流亡政府』），大膽碰觸敏感的族群議題（見『蔡英文：認真面對外省族群認同』）。

為什麼會有這麼大的轉變？

而這些都是在她以高達九成多的黨員支持度連任民進黨主席之後才突然一一出現的。也就是說，在她確定了握有超過九成民進黨黨員的支持之後。

前後兩相對照，應該不難看出，原來，她前兩年的低調與外表上的軟弱並不一定能代表她的本質，而是一個新出現的領導者所必須經歷的權力整合過程。她必須確定能保有領導者的聲望與權力，才有辦法做她想做的事。

任何理想，也只有在有實力的前提下，才有實現的可能。這在任何團體都一樣，應該可算是「政治101」。

於是，她的整個佈局突然變得清晰明朗。她的夢想、她的視野，她對台灣該往哪裡去，以及更重要的，「該如何走到目標」，突然像一張地圖一樣整個攤開在眼前。從她當初排除萬難勇敢接任民進黨主席的爛攤子開始之後的作戰策略，也一步一步展開實現中：

1. 泛綠團結 ─

她必須先把面臨崩盤的泛綠糊起來。這一步做得到，那即使她沒有辦法再當黨主席，至少台灣派勢力不至於泡沫化。這已經在經過幾次選舉勝選後達成。

2. 權力整合 ─

接下來她必須確保這個已經糊起來的泛綠能夠全力支持她，讓她有落實理想的本錢。這已經由九成的黨員投票達成。

這個九成的支持度，代表泛綠從以前比較偏向對抗的、「以反擊國民黨策略為主」的被動游擊戰權力結構，轉型到合作的、「以團結所有共同命運的民眾為主」的主動謀略戰權力結構，是泛綠政治史上的一個非常關鍵的轉捩點。

這個「九成多支持度」讓她確信民進黨舊勢力不會再把民進黨拉回強烈排他的舊途徑。若沒有這個支持度，蔡英文的佈局將無法開展，她也必須繼續再保持低調不知多久。

我們從蔡英文決定參選的說明也可以看出來，她已經瞭解這個轉捩點的時機比她預期的提早到來。她已經有足夠的支持，可以提前開始實現她的理想。所以才會說「提早實現十年政綱」並毅然投入選戰。

她已經達成了 1 與 2。從現在開始，她的一切動作，應該可以放在 3，4，5 的架構上來看：

3. 分清「親中特權」與「所有台灣人民」

親中特權積極在運作的，是以所有台灣民眾的成就與資源，換取他們與中國統一的夢想。就跟 228 時的外省權貴將台灣所有的糖米礦等全部拿去服侍中國，導致台灣以稻米生產國竟然鬧糧荒一樣，現在的親中特權，正竭盡所能將台灣數十年努力成果拱手讓中國來接收。

在這個「台灣存在的目的就是服侍中國」的最高指導原則下，台灣數十年經濟成果將迅速被中國吞食，不管你省籍藍綠，所有台灣人民將是受害者。

要達到這個目的，親中特權必須確保台灣全民不會團結起來。

但他們無須發明什麼招數來分化台灣人，因為泛綠長久以來對部分台灣人民的對抗與排他心態，已經幫他們把台灣人切割好。

泛綠這種堅持抗拒、排他的路線，帶給台灣民眾恐懼或厭惡，使得多數台灣人即使有強烈的台灣意識也不願意支持民進黨。我曾在去年的一篇文章『台派知識份子的責任：建構一個「屬於所有台灣住民」的全民台灣』(在我的部落格、Taiwan Online ) 中提到：

絕大多數台灣人民要建自己的國（用台派偏好的詞彙，就是人民已經「覺醒」），但是不敢也不願把「建國」的事情託付給台灣派的人選。

不管國民黨多爛，也不管多數人民都已經知道獨立的必要性，人民對台灣派候選人的疑慮與不安，恐怕要超過他們對「國民黨無能」的失望與苛責。

於是，泛綠這種切割將自己與這些台灣民眾一分為二，不但強化對手弱化自己，更模糊了這些民眾與親中特權之間的對立本質，等於確保了台灣人民永遠無法團結對外。

從蔡英文最近的言論，可以看出來她不但有足夠的智慧能夠看到泛綠這個大罩門，也有足夠的自信能夠解決這個問題。

譬如說，重新提醒民眾「中華民國為外來政權」，正是把「親中特權」跟「台灣全民」分清楚，有助於讓民眾更清楚前述的對立本質；

而「認真面對外省族群的情感」是展現對所有在台灣住民的「命運共同體」的認知，是拉攏台灣民眾、拓展民進黨票源的不二法門。

這一推一拉，將可幫助 4 跟 5 的達成：

4. 團結「台灣民眾」拒絕「親中特權」
5. 以「團結的台灣」防止中國接收台灣

我相信這些步驟都將在未來一一實現。

另外，她在這時候提到「省籍」，可能還有另一個戰略上的重要意義：在提名五都候選人時，北市、新北市、大台中，國民黨派出的人選郝龍彬、朱立倫、胡志強，都是外省籍。

國民黨是否意圖藉此來防堵台灣資源由台灣人掌控，無須批判，因為一批判，就落入省籍對立的陷阱中。

蔡英文這一推外來政權，二拉所有省籍台灣全民，卻是對國民黨的可能意圖提供了許多想像的空間 ── 台灣籍政治人物，真的只能揀國民黨親中特權吃剩下的殘渣充飢嗎？

但她沒有下結論，只是把事實與現況擺開。這種方式的陳述，給人民空間自己下判斷，其影響將會自然而然地深植人心，與泛綠菁英向來堅持的灌輸式、教導式、批判式的權威方式有天壤之別。

蔡英文的路線

李登輝當年的「特殊兩國論」，在台灣政治發展史上扮演了相當關鍵的角色 ── 將「在台灣的政府」跟「中國那塊地」切割開來變成兩國，使得台灣意識的發展，在「中國境外」有一個立足點。

而蔡英文正是這個「特殊兩國論」論述的起草人。亦即，她對台灣「與中國劃清界線」的民主化過程的貢獻，是早在民進黨執政之前就已經明白地寫在台灣的歷史上。

如果把當初特殊兩國論的論述當作蔡英文思維的出發點，來觀察蔡英文這兩年來的言論與作為，應該不難看出蔡英文的風格：一步一步踏實往地前走，每一步都經過審慎策劃與思考，每一步都不浪費。既不像許多泛綠菁英幻想的一步到位，更不像馬氏政權一樣瘋狂燥進。

蔡英文決定參選新北市的公開信裡的一段，可以借來印證我的看法：

如果這個決定只是關於我個人的政治生涯規劃，那我絕對不會讓大家等到現在。正是因為我身為民進黨的主席，我清楚知道，我的下一步絕對跟民進黨的改革，以及整個台灣民主政治的未來有關。所以，我的確需要多一點時間來嚴肅思考。思考的重點，從來都不在於我個人的意願或政治前途，我思考的重點只有一個：參選或不參選，到底哪一個可以把「民進黨的改革」、「對執政黨的監督」、「新北市民未來的幸福」，以及「台灣整體的利益」，這四者緊緊結合在一起，然後發揮到最大。這中間沒有甚麼轉彎，也沒有甚麼猶豫不決，這是一個結合全黨上下追求答案，然後把黨的資源妥善安頓，帶著整個黨上戰場的過程。

目前，民進黨已經在蔡英文的整理下重新站起來。不管多少綠營反蔡人士仍堅稱蔡英文沒有貢獻，她在民進黨崩盤的情形下接下重擔，將民進黨帶到這個局勢，已經是功不可沒。

不但如此，她的風格與理念，更已經將民進黨提升到另一個層次，讓民進黨可以在短期內迅速地脫胎換骨。依這個道路，民進黨可以以合作與理想來爭取為所有台灣人民服務的機會（也就是說，不必靠國民黨做爛來得票），而台灣全民將有機會走向「所有台灣住民命運息息相關」的整體意識，這應是達到「團結全台灣對抗外來勢力」的最佳途徑。

如今，她的佈局已經明朗化，她的整軍也已經到位備戰，現在才剛剛是她出手的開始，往後還有很艱困的路要走。泛綠菁英是否能瞭解她的眼界、理想與整體戰略佈局，並跟著轉型以做為助力，而不是自己困在傳統的對抗模式中而反成為拖力，對台灣的未來，恐將有決定性的影響。

Pan Green's Mentality Behind the CSB Case -- And a Replay in Kaoshiung

2009-09-24T13:36:00.012+08:00

The CSB's case - either what he did or didn't do, or the way the Taipei judiciary system fixed the case - has been haunting Taiwan in the past whole year. People with justice in mind couldn't stop asking why it could be possible, or wondering how the KMT could pull out the conspiracy so successfully to persecute the officials (and their families) of previous government in such a blatant way (see J. Michael Cole's Mobilize Now!).

From my understanding, one of the answers - a very critical one - lies in nowhere else but the green camp itself.

We Taiwanese haven't quite get to know how to be masters of own fates yet. Most still think like servants in the old time, that we go to the voting booth to "pick the Savior." Hoping that the Savior alone can right every wrong for us, we all go back home to wait for out dream to come true, without paying much attention to watch if the Savior does follow the promises he made.

Or even some do pay attention, they keep silent because they insist on "solidifying the leadership," based on the belief that not criticizing the Savior is the only means for the Savior to lead us to the promised land (I pointed this out in a post (in Chinese) when discussing the case of DPP's controversial pick of Tainan County candidate back in April, 台灣派的枷鎖：鞏固領導中心).

So, in contrary to the continuous attacks coming from the blue camp on very single policy our the Savior made, we keep very low profile, making it look like that we can take it whichever way it goes. As a result, the leader will only see and feel mounting pressure from the blue camp.

It won't be hard to picture what a person in the position of the Savior will do under that situation.

It thus drifts, step by step, farther away from our dream, until one day the situation is rotten to a point of no return.

Even at that point, we fail to recognize that the failure is the result of aggressive attacks from the blue camp, of our silence in response to those attacks, and of our ignorance thinking that the fate of a country relies solely on the shoulders of a single the Savior.

One man rises, the country is saved; one man goes down, we are all dead. So we all rush out to blame the Savior for all the fall. We claim that the so-called Saviorlied to us, that the Savior is not a savior at all. We forget that when one goes to the public announcing that he was lied to, he is announcing that something goes wrong in his intelligence.

As such, by laying all blames upon the falling guy, we wipe out the guilt of choosing a wrong leader (which in wrong), and free ourselves from the responsibility of letting the situation go worse and worse without intervening with the mind of masters.

This is probably the primary mentality of all those "anti-Bian" hatrid in the green camp -- coming from people ranging from general populate to highly educated elites, including some pronounced scholars and professors, domestic or overseas.

Very very few Taiwanese realize that, when things go wrong in a democracy, people -- the masters -- are those who are responsible. Because Taiwanese are unwilling or unaware of the need to play the role of a responsible master, that we have no courage to carry the burden, upon failure we blame everyone -- the non-green voters, the KMT, and their own falling leader -- but ourselves. That mentality is the key reason KMT is able to play the CSB card so well --- they must have known that if they pull CSB's legs to an extent, the green camp will follow up with much harsher attack against our own leader all by ourselves. In that sense, I would argue that we somehow conspire with KMT to allow the judiciary operation to go down so quickly.

Wandering around forums/blogs of both Chinese and English, I witness how much effort the English circle put on the judiciary injustice on CSB's case in the past year -- analysis, criticisms, open letters, endorsements ... one after one. In contrary, the attention of green camp on CSB's human right is almost none -- most major players or elites were dwelling in the anger of "we are cheated; we are hurt; it's all his fault." The attention from the green camp to care about the justice in CSB's case didn't show up until early May this year, when DPP politicians suddenly woke up and went to visit CSB in jail one by one during the week before DPP's 517 protest. It is at least 6 month of total negligence on the judiciary unfairness that will definitely hurt all Taiwanese in the future. Even after then, the hatred and anger keep coming from the green elites (hey, I just got one email of this sort today). It is so intense that it looks like wiping out CSB from our memories is the only thing pan green cares in the world, and as long as we do this but nothing else, we will reach our wonderland automatically.

The unbelievable ignorance toward the immediate danger right in front of us, and the shocking contrast between the Taiwanese and English circles lead me to a painful realization that the real source of major failure of green camp is most probably embedded deep in the green camp itself, not in the blue camp. Without fixing those internal problems, pan green will not gain any advantage even Ma government and the KMT fare much worse then what have done now.

But how? I am not quite sure, yet.

Taiwanese retested in Kaoshiung

But, the way Kaoshiung City handles Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer's documentary "The 10 Conditions of Love" in the Kaoshiung Film Festival is a "CSB government in a smaller scale" that provides us a real chance to relive what happened before, as well as to rehearse what is to come in the future. (See Kaoshiung Folds under China's Pressure to Kick Rebiya's Film out of the Festival)

Every single administration head has to face public opinions, and act accordingly. There's no doubt that pro-China power will be very aggressive to give pressure to stop the screening of Kadeer's movie. If we don't play the role of asking what should have been done with at least the same caliber of pressure the pro-china voices asking Chen Chu （陳菊, Mayor of Kaoshiung City, who approves the decision to exclude the screening of the film from the Festival) to stop filming it, then Chen Chu will only face one-sided pressure from the pro-China camp. She will have no choice but follow what "the louder voices" wants. The compromising on the free speech issue will encroach further step by step, as what happened during CSB's era.

Some argue that although it's not an ideal solution by rescheduling the film to a date 3 weeks ahead of the Festival, we won a little by filming it anyway. To me that argument makes absolutely no sense.

If the case happens in a blue district, we could argue that because the administrative power is in blue's hand, we expect that Kadeer's film be prohibited, so we will "win a little" if we get it screened, even it's not screened during the Festival.

But this is in a green district !!! Screening Kadeer's film DURING the Festival is the rightful state we should have been in. Any other approach is a "loss", thus can only be a question of "losing small" or "losing big." It will never be a "win."

Mistaking a "small loss" as a "small win," simply because what the blue camp wants is a "big loss" from us. This sort of forgetting where we should be has been happening again and again in the past.

That's why I emphasize that it is a "fold" to pro-China's power. We all understand that Chen Chu is taking huge pressure from pro-China camp. But, we will go toward very different directions by choosing from the following two choices: trying to explain away the losing move as a winning one, or trying to build up the pressure from the green side to balance the pressure and help Chen Chu make a real winning move.

Kaoshiung Folds under China's Pressure to Kick Rebiya's Film out of the Festival

2009-09-21T05:08:00.013+08:00

Kaohsiung City surrenders to China's pressure and removes Uighor leader Rebiya's film "Ten Conditions of Love" from the upcoming Kaohsiung Film Festival starting from Oct, 16th.

They claim that it is rescheduled to 9/22, 9/23 -- 3 weeks ahead of the Festival program. That is, people who attend the Festival will NOT be able to watch it.

In the mean time, Kaoshiung City still tries to convince people that, by screening it anyway, they show their respect and support to the freedom and independent spirit of art. The Director-General of Kaoshiung City's Department of Information, Li-Ming Hsu (新聞處長許立明) claims in the rescheduling announcement that the decision of rejecting Rebiya's film was made based on the principles of (1) protecting the freedom of creativity, (2) upholding the independence of Festival operation and (3)respecting the right of movie viewers (保障創作自由、策展獨立與民眾觀影權利).

I have hard time following his logic, for that if they are based on those principles, shouldn't Rebiya's film be screened in the Festival as originally scheduled ?

He also claims that Rebiya's film is just one of the 79 films they will screen, so they decide to remove the film in order to protect the creative values of the rest 78 films.

For what I know so far, there's nothing at all indicates that any of the other 78 films is in any way jeopardized by this wave of protest against Rebiya's film.

The next day after the rescheduling was announced, the Festival organizer, which is taking order from the Kaoshiung City, issued an apology, claiming that it's determined by Kaoshiung City government so it's out of their hands. Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), who gained wide support and approval with her successful management in the World Games earlier, emphasizes that the rescheduling is "not to please China, but to cease conflicts."

Haven't we heard this kind of arguments - repeatedly - before, from the blue camp ? Which act of "pleasing China" from the blue camp wasn't coated with one sort of something else one way or anyther ? Did Chen Chu forget that the green camp has been criticizing Ma Ying-jeou and KMT for pleasing China?

So it's OK to please China only if it comes from the green camp ?

The hard lesson to learn by all Taiwanese is that the hypocrisy doesn't have boundary.

What more pathetic is, Kaoshiung City reschedules the screening time to prevent Rebiya's film from showing in the Festival in the hope to "cease the conflict." But those who protested are still protesting and requesting that Kaoshiung to surrender completely by not filming it at all (高市府：放映熱比婭勿政治詮釋).

Being a city that has been the historical sources of democratic development in Taiwan, Kaoshiung city behaves with unbelievably naiveness by thinking that the pressure from pro-china power can be handled by partial compromise.

Ma Ying-jeou becomes the gustiest by wooing China

2009-09-09T23:21:00.006+08:00

Regarding the issue of Ma Ying-jeou being selected as one of 5 gustiest world leaders in the Mental Floss (MF) magazine, I found the Q&A in MF's website here:

1. Who are the five leaders profiled for the “5 Gutsiest World Leaders” cover story?
Lula da Silva, Angela Merkel, Yoweri Museveni, Michelle Bachelet, Ma Ying-jeou.

It is presented as the cover story of the current issue, which requires a subscription to access. But the MF outlines the reasons these people are picked in an abstract here:

The World's Gutsiest Leaders
By Jennifer Drapkin

Whether they're healing a tortured nation, conquering AIDS, uniting Europe, galvanizing Latin America, or wooing China, these heads of state are proving that they have what it takes to change the world.

Ma Ying-jeou is among the gustiest because he is "wooing China."

Update:

The Mental Floss article about Ma can be found here. I saw it from this site: Mental_Floss 有關馬英九的報導全文

The article is full of bullshits. Just one example among many: it argues that because of CSB, the trades between China and Taiwan waned, that caused Taiwan's economics to go down, and that caused the Taiwan-USA relationship to go bad. With that kind of nonsense, MF reaches a conclusion that everything is settled after Ma, against all odds, arranged a very difficult marriage between China and Taiwan.

Is it expressed in a sarcastic manner? I don't think so. It is more like a regurgitation of bias against Taiwan we often see in western journalist circle, which only shows how poor the author's knowledge is.

Privilege - the core spirit of Chinese society

2009-09-07T21:13:00.006+08:00

J. Michael Cole's article (as usual, worth readying) regarding the critics of China Post on the democracy inspires some discussion about the democracy (or the lack of it) in Chinese society. I am putting my thoughts here (with netters' questions), with the argument that the democracy is impossible in the privilege-based Chinese society.

Chinese society is based on privileges

The most important ingredient in Chinese culture is "privilege." People do whatever they can to get privileged, and the authority uses the privilege to buy loyalty. The entire social structure is built on the give and take of privileges.

That's why the true justice is impossible in Chinese society, because it requires that everybody is equal before the law.

That's why the democracy is denounced by Chinese, especially Chinese intellectuals, because in a democratic society the non-educated share the same political right as the educated.

If you were a member of any of most of Chinese organizations, you would find that they work as much as possible to avoid "rules," because existence of rules means everyone should follow.

Chinese don't like rules, don't like laws, and reject the democracy, because there is no room for privileges.

Understanding this, it won't be hard to see the source of the chaos in Taiwan.

Anonymous: "Any idea of whether such opinion pieces are sincerely based on the author's commitments, or paid advertising for the CCP?"

I can't say if it is paid for, but it doesn't need CCP to pay for this. That's in Chinese culture so they will say it for their own benefits, for free. We will continue to see Chinese intellectuals saying how bad a democracy is.

A democracy comes with laws

Anonymous: "@ Taiwan Echo. you make some interesting points. but if chinese hate rules, wouldn't they like 'chaotic' democracy? if democracy seems to have less structure, then it would allow you more freedom from rules...?"

First of all, "democracy is chaotic" is something deserves review. A democracy comes with laws to ensure that the democracy spirit is established. Without the fair and effective enforcement of laws, the justice cannot prevail, then the democracy will fail. The idea "democracy is chaotic" is thus a distortion. A democracy would turn chaotic only when people want the "freedom" part but disregard the "law" part. When that happens, the apparent democracy is just a formality. Paying attention to the "law" part of a democracy, it won't be hard to observe how often Chinese intellectuals (in Taiwan) undermine the law, and use that to get privileges. That's what brings chaos into the society. The question "won't Chinese love democracy because it's chaotic" is false.

The Confucianism in China is just a facade

Anonymous: "in a way, you seem to be arguing what the CCP has often argued. democracy is a western idea that is necessarily in conflict with chinese (confucian?) culture. Partly relevant is Bell's book 'China's New Confucianism. He argues that chinese will probably prefer some form of confucian rule, may be not democracy. (He also gives an interesting argument why, according to the confucian view on just war, China couldn't attack Taiwan if the latter declares independence.)"

I didn't read the book by Bell, so I can't comment. But I agree that there probably won't be wars if China does follow the Confucianism. I do appreciate the values presented in the teachings of Confucius. However, here is the situation that most westerners fail to see: in Chinese society, the teaching is one thing, the behaviors in the real world is totally different. Powerful people use the Confucianism to teach people (so the students can behave), but their own behaviors violate the teachings in many aspects. Somewhere along the line of Chinese history, Chinese developed hypocrisy as the "living principle" in conjunction with the "teaching principle" of Confucianism. People who learn the Confucianism in their early ages have to grow up behaving the opposite way otherwise they will continue to get suppressed by those who "get privileged by violating the teachings."

Just review the history of foreign encounters of Chinese. There are so many examples that Chinese gain upper hands by breaking their promises. Failing to keep promises is something Confucius criticized heavily. See how Ma Ying-jeou presents himself in a polite and soft-spoken manner. This part fits the teaching. But how many laws has he violated yet he still claims that following laws is his living standard ? How many promises have he broken, which is in complete opposite direction of Confucianism ? Until this time, the western world is still naively believing this biggest hypocrite. The western world just don't get that in Chinese society, "talking sense" is just a tool to gain upper hands.

Again, it all comes down to the privilege. No matter it's law, democracy, or Confucianism (hey, Confucianism is some sort of rules, too), in Chinese-based society, it will be bent and shaped into a tool to ensure that some class of people will hold their privileges. Newer generations will have no choice but become part of it.

Yes, I am arguing - like the CCP is - that the democracy is impossible in Chinese-based society, but obviously based on very different reasons.

vin: "But Chinese and Taiwanese prize stability above all else -- and stability has for so many Chinese centuries has been based on orthodoxy built on privilege."

Right on! That's how Chinese "use" Confucianism, as a tool to ensure privileges. IMO it's not what Confucius really meant.

Dalai Lama accepts green camp's invitation to visit Taiwan

2009-08-27T01:10:00.008+08:00

AP reports that Dalai Lama has accepted the invitation to visit Taiwan (in Chinese here):

A joint statement by leaders from seven municipalities recently hit by deadly Typhoon Morakot said the Tibetan spiritual leader planned to be in Taiwan from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4 and would visit storm victims.

This certainly puts Ma regime in a very serious dilemma. I couldn't say it better than what's in the report (highlight mine):

Political scientist George Tsai of Taipei's Chinese Culture University (台北中國文化大學政治學家蔡信安) said the Dalai Lama announcement has put Ma in a bind.

"If the central government allows Dalai Lama to visit, relations with China will be damaged, but if not, the public will think the central government lacks humanitarian concern (for victims)," Tsai said.

It is understandable that Ma regime doesn't know how to respond:

Ma spokesman Wang Yu-chi declined to say whether Taiwan would allow the Dalai Lama to visit. Analysts said such a politically sensitive visit was unlikely, though the Dalai Lama has made three visits to the island over the past 12 years.

There must be some torturing struggle in Ma Ying-jeou's mind now. He has flipped his tongue 180 degree before and after he took the office, from praising Dalai Lama to denouncing him in the fear of angering the communist China. Ma has expressed in many occasions that he considers Taiwan as an area of China. So Ma couldn't possibly approve Dalai Lama's visit without the approval of the central government in his mind - the communist China government that is.

Considering this: China has always portrayed Dalai Lama as a separatist. Whichever country approves for Dalai Lama's visit is heavily condemned by the Chinese government. Allowing Ma to welcome Dalai lama will jeopardize this non-negotiable stand. So it's almost impossible for China to approve this.

However, Ma's credit and approval rate in Taiwan are in their historical low. If Ma denies Dalai Lama's visit again (Ma denied his visit openly last November, even that Dalai Lama never expressed his intention of visiting), it will drag him much deeper into the abyss and make his recovery much more difficult. It might even push Ma to the point of no return when Ma is currently on the brim of losing his political grip. That will result in either Ma being replaced, or his policy of annexing Taiwan being seriously challenged by his colleague. Either way is certainly not in Ma's nor China's best interest.

So China will have to approve Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan, if they still want to take advantage of what's left of Ma's value. But, such a serious violation of their firm stand against Dalai Lama will have to come with something in return - something very very big, in proportional to what China has to give.

What will Ma Ying-jeou surrender in return for China's cooperation to allow Dalai Lama's visit in order to to save both of them himself?

Will this surrendering indeed save them, or lower people's trust on Ma even more ?

One thing is almost certain: if that kind of deal is made, expect a consensus between them, that China will criticize Ma heavily in order to keep communist China's face. But, that will inevitably raise questions that the two sides across the strait are not that buddy-buddy after all.

No matter how they fare it, Ma and the communist China are in lose-lose situation in this case. Strategically speaking, the green camp fires a perfect shot.

In the mean time, some blue politicians got angered immediately, going so far as to label Dalai Lama a disaster (高市政府：達賴允諾來台安慰災民　藍委：嫌災難不多嗎？):

國民黨籍立委邱毅聞訊後痛批，邀請的人真沒有頭腦，達賴來台將嚴重影響兩岸關係，更會惹麻煩，「他們是嫌台灣的災難不夠多嗎？」
KMT legislator Chiu Yi fired a broadside at the news, saying that those invited Dalai Lama are brainless. He said that the visit will seriously damage the cross-strait relation and will cause troubles. "Do they think that Taiwan's disaster is not enough?"

Well, it is indeed a disaster --- to Ma regime and his pro-China thugs. Whenever you see pro-blue politicians jump furiously like this, you know that a good move has been made.

Note:
Two Michaels just blogged about this:
Michael Turton: DPP invites Dalai Lama to visit disaster areas
J. Michael cole: Let’s bring things back to the center

Ma Ying-jeou in the most crucial hours of Morakot

2009-08-19T12:05:00.005+08:00

He wants you to focus on how many were rescued such that you will forget how many lives were lost due to his blunders in the most crucial hours.
~~ Taiwan Echo ~~

The international community always portraits Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou as a capable politician who can achieve magics, without acknowledging the fact that every single construction or major policy under Ma's administration during his two terms (8 years) of the Taipei Mayorship ends up a disaster (go google, don't take my word for it).

All those facts of incompetence are hidden from the eyes of western readers by journalists whose reports literally conspire to mislead people by beautifying Ma Ying-jeou with layers of lies.

But now all those are torn apart completely by Ma's unbelievable blunders in response to the torment the Typhoon Morakot (莫拉克颱風) imposed upon innocent Taiwanese people. Finally, western journalists are forced to see with their own eyes how mistaken they were about this Harvard-educated, soft fluent-English-spoken Ma Ying-jeou.

Below are what the real Ma Ying-jeou - not the one painted by the media - did in the beginning of Morakot disaster -- the most crucial time to save lives.

(1) Attending a wedding party when Morakot strikes

Typhoon Morakot reached Hualian, Taiwan, at 11:50pm, August 7th. Taiwan has already suffered damages that day ^[1.1].

The next day (Aug, 8th), when the flooding got worse in southern Taiwan ^[1.2], Ma Ying-jeou didn't seem to make any attempt to prepare for any disaster. He started his schedule by attending a wedding party in Taipei in the evening. He spent 1.5 hr in the party, joked around and delivered a speech bragging about how great his China policy is. Only after then did he go to the Cabinet's Drought Disaster Relief Center (DDRC, 中央災害應變中心). What he did in DDRC is unknown, but none about the preparation against natural calamities was reported, let alone any evacuation order.

(2) Interfering rescue by rushing to the front line for the spot-light

When it got even worse the next day (Aug, 9th) ^[2.1], Ma, without taking any state-level measures, rushed to the front line where people were busy with real rescue efforts.

Receiving the president of a country, presumably the rescue personnel on-site have to stop their work to brief him (or not ?). His visit would crowd the area with his security guards. To ensure his safety, his visit would occupy personnel urgently needed for the rescue, thus reduce the manpower needed for saving lives. In fact, Ma Ying-jeou was stuck in Chiayi (嘉義）by the flooding, which turned himself into one needs to be rescued ^[2.2]. For that, he might be directly responsible for the death of many people who might otherwise be saved.

More incredible is, Ma Ying-jeou appeared in front of the camera with local KMT candidates wearing their campaign jackets ! What on earth did he want to achieve with that other than showing off in front of the camera ?

When 921 Earthquake happened back in 1999, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) went to the rescue site quickly, too. However, before Lee went to the site, he and his government already initiated a series of state-level rescue measures in 13 minutes after the quake. A command center was established on the rescue site in a couple of hours. Lee convened a national security meeting the same day ^[2.3]. He went to the disaster site only after he had set up the government rescue mechanism and got himself fully informed of what's going on.

In contrary, Ma quickly rushed to the disaster scene empty-handed. No emergency meeting convened, no state-level rescue mechanism pre-arranged, no one in the government knows what they need to do. As shown in the website screen shot ^[2.4] of the Executive Yuan's National Disaster Prevention and Protection Commission (行政院災害防救委員會), when lives were lost and villages were swept away in the south on Aug. 9th, Ma's government still believes that there's no serious calamity and the most updated warning of disaster on that page is for an earthquake on Aug. 3rd !

Try imagining this after the hurricane Katrina: at the time the rescuing attempt started, USA's former president G.W. Bush flight from DC to the sites, putting himself in the center of rescue, shaking hands with people and posing in front of the spot-light to be interviewed by the media -- and all are done without any attempt of national coordination. Imagine that, and ask what would you think about Bush in this imagined scenario.

By showing up in the rescue site without any relief plan, Ma Ying-jeou shows us not only how spot-light-hungry he is, but also that he has no idea what a president's duty is..

As a result, his rushing to the front line achieved nothing other than endangering lives of many. The only thing guaranteed is that the image of him shaking hands with people on the rescue site gets shown on the front pages of news, as though the country will be ok as long as he looks good in the news.

(3) Messing up the rescue plan by giving direct orders

The rising waters at where Ma visited could get people drowned right at the time he was visiting, which won't look good in the news at all. Ignoring all procedures that might be crucial for the best allocation of limited resources, Ma used his cell phone to make a direct call to Taipei and ordered Taipei government to deliver pumps to Chiayi immediately ^[3.1],^[3.2].

Did he know who knows better where the pumps should be delivered, who knows the environment better, what type of pumps should be used in that environment, what other devices and personnel are needed for that mission, where else might be in much more urgent need of pumps, and how long does it take for the pumps from Taipei to be delivered?

Furthermore, as the president, does he know that he is the head of all military forces so he can instruct the army to help the rescue mission -- the army of all specialties (including the marine and special operation forces) that already stationed in Kaohsiung (高雄), Chishan (旗山), Linyuan (林園), Yanchao (燕巢), Gangshan (岡山), Tainan (台南) -- all in very close vicinity of Chiayi? Did he have any scintilla of idea what is available in southern part of Taiwan at all?

All those close military units were left alone when he tried to order pumps far from Taipei with a direct phone call. Does he has to perform in front of the camera as though he was the one doing something, and no one else is doing anything ? It did make it easier for him to play the blaming games to cover his incompetence, didn't it ?

With his poor knowledge about available resources and his poor judgment by giving direct orders without knowledge of the overall situation, Ma messed up the rescue and might have jeopardized lives of more citizens.

(4) Leading the country toward the game of finger-pointing

When Ma and his government didn't do any preventive preparations, didn't warn the victims about how serious it could be, didn't issue any evacuation order to the disaster area, didn't keep track of what damages already being done and what misery people are already suffering, and Ma himself went to a wedding party when people were about to lose their own or family's lives (some lost entire family of 15 or more), Ma Ying-jeou has the audacity to show up in front of the camera to pin the fault on the suffering victims!

What kind of cruelty is hidden behind the facade of the apparant eloquent gestures and a mouthful of fluent English ?

He also blames The Central Weather Bureau (中央氣象局) for not being able to make precise prediction, without the knowledge that the weather prediction is extremely difficult, especially the rain level.

He also blames local governments for no disaster prevention constructions, without acknowledging that the disaster relief budgets were often cut by the Legislative Yuan in which his KMT members always has the majority.

He even blames the weather, saying that the rescue is delayed by the disaster that damaged the roads, forgetting that human can still walk without roads. In fact, there were at least several members of special operations force took a leave from their station, went back to the disaster area to rescue their families. They had to take a leave because no one in Ma Ying-jeou's administration ordered them to do anything when lives of their families were in danger. They were able to rescue people by themselves, but Ma Ying-jeou wants you to believe that it's the weather that makes military rescue impossible.

Even after days of heavy criticism from international media, in an interview by CNN, Ma YJ finally said he will take full responsibility. But he followed immediately with what he means by taking responsibility -- punishing others ^[4.1]. His definition of taking the responsibility is to blame all wrongs on others but himself, as though that people should have got everything done and ready for him to sit there enjoying the life of an emperor worry-free. Those who didn't make sure that happens should take all the blames.

(5) He doesn't know what to do in a disaster relief meeting

When the 921 earthquake stroke in 1999, former president Lee Tenghui convened the first high-level national security meeting (國安高層會議) to lay out his rescue plan on the first day, and had the second meeting 2 days later.

Why did it take Ma 7 days to convene such a meeting? We will never know, but what he did in the first meeting might shed some light.

Taiwan has accumulated experiences of disaster rescue channel and established pretty good disaster response mechanism during the past decades. But when a disaster of this scale happens, often a system like that is not enough. Foreign aid will flow in, which might involve diplomatic issues beyond a domestic rescue channel can handle. It also involves the deployment of military personnel and resources, which requires an assessment of the balance between rescuing victims and defending the country. The re-distribution of reserved resources is way beyond the authority of a routine rescue system.

This is when a national security meeting should step in. By convening such a meeting, the president should lay the foundation to coordinate all those different resources and channel them to the rescue system. He should monitor and give instructions on how the routine rescue system, the foreign aids, the military reserves, the local and central governments should coordinate. And he should play that role of watching all channels of forces until all problems are solved.

Unfortunately, none of the above was conducted by Ma Ying-jeou in his 7-day-late meeting ^[5.1]. Nothing on the coordination on the national level that only the president can do is discussed or planned (for example, how to handle foreign aids is completely missing in the meeting). Instead, Ma's speech is full of impractical wishful thinking like "I hope...", "... very important", "we should ...", "we must ...". Other than that, he issues instructions that the head of rescue system can issue, which includes the only significant instruction he gave in the meeting -- mobilizing the students of police academics.

Among all mumbo jumbo, he did remember to start the speech by bragging how many people his government rescued by emphasizing that it's the record high. In fact, he keeps mentioning this in every chance he got, as though he has done a cherity service to the victims so poeple should not have complained. This kind of bragging is surely not you want to hear in a meeting like that.

Now we see why the meeting was delayed --- he has no idea at all what he should do with such a meeting !!! Such a disaster-handling meeting requires him to behave like a commander who makes new problem-solving decisions but not just regurgitating what he memorized. This is something far beyond his ability, and his fear of taking on it shows that he knows it by heart.

Ma Ying-jeou's fear of taking up the responsibility doesn't stop there. After the meeting, he refused to take the command. He handed over all responsibilities to the rescue team. The government claims that what is left will now all count on the routine rescue system, so Ma will retreat behind the first line of rescue and reconstruction, leaving himself completely out of future responsibilities ^[5.2].

So what is left for Ma Ying-jeou to be responsible for? Full time blame hunter to hunt down those who did nothing because Ma never gave any order?

Ma Ying-jeou has been either a government official or people's elected all his adult life, yet his extremely poor knowledge on the duty of a government's job and his complete lack of sense of responsibility would guarantee that there's a long long way of future suffering for Taiwanese to endure.

The above is a retrospect to part of Ma Ying-jeou's blunders in the most crucial hours of Morakot disaster. His unprecedented incompetence followed by the act of 100% responsibility shirking stun those who thought Ma Ying-jeou was a savior of Taiwan. Even KMT high-level feels something is seriously wrong --- after all, they just handed this incompetent pretty-face camera boy the absolute power by electing him the KMT's chairman.

There are a lot more unbelievable blunders happened and are happening (just google !), so I'll stop here for now. For Ma Ying-jeou, he might be burning his scarce brain cells calculating how to shirk all responsibilities by finger-pointing and by bragging what record he had achieved to make people think that it's a previlige to have him as the president.

For most Taiwanese, however, judging from the fact that Ma failed to get a single collapsed building rebuilt in 7 years (see my post in 2006, Hopeless quake victims under Ma Ying-Jeou's lead), the suffering has just begun.

馬英九下令地方首長到其他縣市救災的合法性

2009-08-12T00:36:00.011+08:00

報載馬英九昨天下令台北縣長周錫瑋到南部救災 (馬總統指示周錫瑋率車隊南縣救災 )。這個動作讓人震驚。

總統有權對地方首長下這種指令嗎？地方首長是總統的屬下嗎？

地方縣市首長是該縣市選民投票選出來的。亦即，縣市首長的權力，來自該地選民，不是中央政府；，因此，該負責的對象，是該地選民，不是中央政府；地方首長的老闆，也是該地的選民，不是中央政府，更不是總統。

馬英九這種越權的動作，顯示在他心裡面認為只要一當上總統，管轄區裡的所有人事物都屬於他的，這種權威時代家天下的老舊思維，充分顯示馬英九連總統的權限在哪裡都搞不清楚。

馬英九這個「無法無天」的荒謬動作只是「下令台北縣長到台南救災」的問題之一。

周錫瑋「立即召開動員會議。滿載人員及物資、機具的龐大車隊，今晚陸續南下」並「親率相關局處首長赴南縣救災」。誰的物資、誰的資源、哪裡的局處首長？

如果是台北縣的，台北縣的資源，以及台北縣政府的人力，可以這樣調用嗎？是不是中央救災要地方買單？

還有，現在台北縣長跑到台南跟台南縣長蘇煥智救災，那誰是總指揮呢？

任何一個救災活動，如果沒有統一的權責規劃與指揮中心，將浪費許多資源甚至犧牲人命。

如果是蘇縣長當總指揮，那周錫瑋率領北縣府人員南下，會聽蘇縣長調動嗎？

如果是，那難道蘇縣長手底下原來沒有人可以調嗎？何必大老遠叫一個大牌縣長來台南給蘇縣長調動？

如果不是，那是不是蘇縣長要聽命於周縣長的指揮？一個施政滿意度高的當地縣長，憑什麼要聽命於一個施政滿意度吊車尾的空降縣長？

就因為馬英九賞識周席瑋嗎？還是因為馬英九就是這麼看不起蘇縣長？

然後，最後一個問題，為什麼是施政滿意度那麼差的周席瑋？中央政府的救災機制在哪裡？馬英九手底下還有國民黨人都死光了，必須違法擴張總統權力下令地方首長離開選民去介入其他地方首長的救災嗎？

馬英九這個動作，不但越權，而且空降一個不相干的人介入救災，將整個救災系統打亂，原來的救災體制裡該負責的人員將何去何從？

現在弄到這樣權責混亂，綱紀不存，事後檢討時，救災的功過獎懲要算誰的？是不是又是看馬英九臉色定奪？

由這些分析可以看得出來，馬英九下令周縣長離開選民，恐怕政治動機要遠大過救災誠意。這個荒謬的動作顯示馬英九不是完全搞不清楚總統的定位與權限，就是認為總統的權限可以任意擴張。

馬先生，你連總統的權限都可以這樣胡來，請問你，你常掛在口中的「法」在哪裡？

補註：看看這些人的政治表演秀：

8月9日：	周錫瑋因為台北縣 4個鄉鎮市長在颱風來前「擅離職守」而震怒並打算懲處；
8月9日：	報載周錫瑋因為颱風要坐鎮北縣而取消 6日的香港之行，改由副秘書長廖榮清代打；
8月10日：	周錫瑋救災期間「擅離職守」訪問香港；
8月11日：	馬英九下令周錫瑋「離開職守」南下救災

向國民黨認罪求饒的後果

2009-08-06T12:38:00.005+08:00

陳致中等人，在之前與檢方達成「認罪協商」的決議 ── 認罪並當證人指控其他被告以換取較輕刑罰。檢調在利用他們的認罪來指控其他人（主要是陳水扁）之後，拒絕給予較輕的刑罰：

『台北地院審理扁案，昨傳喚要求認罪協商的陳致中夫婦、吳景茂夫婦及蔡銘杰、郭銓慶六被告，六人均認罪，但特偵組以被告涉洗錢，犯罪情節重大，另有國泰世華七億四千萬元等洗錢案仍在偵查中，拒絕六名被告認罪協商。』陳致中等六被告認罪協商全遭拒

去年底陳致中夫婦決定「認罪協商」之後，我就覺得不妙。

在美國，所謂的 make a deal ，是指被告與檢方達成協議而認罪，協議內容一定包括兩個部分：（1）被告認罪，有時包括自願擔任污點證人指證其他被告；（2）檢方保證較輕的刑期。

在這個協議的溝通時期，「認不認罪」，是被告替自己爭權利的唯一籌碼。被告以這個籌碼與檢方討價還價以換取較輕的刑罰，最後只要證人依照協議認罪/指證，檢方一定保證依照協議給予被告較輕刑罰。

但是在台灣卻很不同。被告被檢方勸導、威脅或利誘而接受所謂的「認罪協商」程序之後，只有單方面的認罪並被利用來指證其他被告，檢方對刑期的減輕毫無任何保證。

因此，這樣的例子，應該叫做「認罪求饒」── 認罪了之後，被告已經完全沒有籌碼，所以唯一能做的，就是叩頭求饒，跪求檢調法外開恩。

我記得陳致中在決定跟檢方「認罪求饒」的時候，他與他的律師完全沒有跟阿扁與阿扁的律師研商。整個過程就是陳致中的律師單方面建議陳致中去認罪。

現在認了罪，被利用完了，還是回到原點被當作重犯。這個例子再一次證明，向國民黨認罪求饒是與虎謀皮，最後八成是賠了夫人又折兵。

陳水扁的律師應該與所有同案被告的律師聯合起來組成一個律師團，做整體的論辯攻防的規劃，譬如說，也許陳致中等人可以考慮「被檢調利誘而錯誤認罪」為由考慮翻供，這樣也許對自己還比較有幫助。

台派知識份子的責任：建構一個「屬於所有台灣住民」的全民台灣

2009-08-01T12:10:00.012+08:00

一個負責任的台灣未來藍圖，應該建築在「所有人都將被接納」
的基礎上，而不是在「所有人都必須同意台灣派」的基礎上
~~ Echo ~~

馬英九政權上個禮拜透過 ECFA 漫畫說帖中的侮辱性人物描述公然以政府公權力挑撥族群對立，分化台灣人(見ECFA 漫畫說帖：一個撕裂社會、製造族群對立的文宣，但是這次，就讓我爽爽快快地幹個徹底吧！）。對此，一個朋友提到：

這倒引發了我一個構想, 民進黨何不藉此高雄世運的成功來反宣傳一哥與發嫂? 馬統政府故意把"高級外省人"的"高級又有品的形象"加諸在苗栗客籍的一嫂身上, 我們何不把這"高級"的一嫂宣傳成一個失敗主義與內心自卑的一嫂? "高級"的假象只是穿在外面偽裝來的, 事實上, 就是一個失敗主義者, 騎牆派, 投機主義者, 沒有國家觀念的機會主義者? 反之, 發福的發哥卻是一個務實, 築夢, 追夢, 愛鄉, 愛土, 不畏強權有正義感的本土台灣人?

個人認為這不是一個好主意。

任何以「某種人格模式」為標準，將某個特定族群「一竿子打翻一群人」地鎖定在這個單一的人格模式裡加以批判的宣傳方式，對台灣社會都是一種嚴重的傷害。

台灣派應該試著向所有住在台灣的民眾描述一個這樣的遠景：每一個生活在台灣的成員，不管他的政治傾向、族群成分，都可以安心地活在台灣而不必擔心會被貼族群標籤，這樣才可能讓所有的台灣住民可以放心地說：台灣是我的家，我的國。

亦即，台灣派應該傳達給所有台灣人的是：台灣派心目中的未來台灣，將建築在「所有人都將被接納」的基礎上，而不是在「所有人都必須同意台灣派」的基礎上。

但是，台灣知識份子的團體所喊的口號與所辦的活動，常常讓我膽顫心驚，因為在這些口號或活動的背後，看不到「不管什麼人都可以安心生活在台灣」的眼界與包容。

相反的，這些活動傳達的訊息，常常是「順我者留、逆我者滾」的強烈排他性。

台灣知識份子的言行，相當程度上代表台灣派對台灣未來的看法，如果台灣知識份子傳達給泛藍支持者的訊息是：台灣派要建構的未來家園中，沒有他們安心存活的空間，那台灣派所喊的每一個口號、所辦的每一個活動，都等於是在逼他們：不管馬英九或國民黨有多爛，一定非支持他們不可，絕對不能支持這些台灣派的人，要不然就死無葬身之地。

這樣的宣傳與活動，其金錢、人力、時間的付出，都將強化泛藍的團結，等於是辛苦工作在幫馬英九、幫國民黨一臂之力。

因此，類似「高級、低級」「本省、外省」等二分法的宣傳，其結果常常就是鞏固泛藍的團結，逼台灣派自己走上絕路。

過去十年來，台灣派的心態大抵是這樣。從早先在論壇常常聽到的「不支持泛綠就去跳海」，到陳水扁要泛藍的人游回中國，到最近的「高級外省人講習會」以及「台灣革命建國常識」中特別圈出「赤藍人」為打擊對象的特定族群描述，都可以說是在「針對特定族群而擬定的排他性」的脈絡上。

這樣的心態與策略的下場很清楚：即使現在民調顯示，已經有八成的民眾認定台灣跟中國不是同一國（台灣人民既不愚蠢也沒有不覺醒！），但是這些「認定台灣是有別於中國的獨立國家」的民眾，投票時恐怕有一大半不會投給台灣派的候選人。

原因可能很複雜，但現象卻很清楚：絕大多數台灣人民要建自己的國（用台派偏好的詞彙，就是人民已經「覺醒」），但是不敢也不願把「建國」的事情託付給台灣派的人選。

不管國民黨多爛，也不管多數人民都已經知道獨立的必要性，人民對台灣派候選人的疑慮與不安，恐怕要超過他們對「國民黨無能」的失望與苛責。

從最近的民調資料以及相關資訊可以揣摩：台灣人民當初選馬英九，並不是他們贊成統一，而是馬英九包裝與欺瞞的技巧奏效，讓他們相信馬英九可以帶給他們一個繁榮的和諧的 ── 而且有別於中國 ── 的社會。

當馬英九的所有承諾都被他的行動證實是謊言的時候，民眾不會 (如許多台派知識份子認定的) 茫然所知；即使口中不願意承認，他們會看到自己被欺騙，而開始尋找能夠帶給他們希望、讓他們放心信任的新目標。

這個民眾希望落空的真空期，正是台灣派大舉收攬這些選民的大好時機！台灣派應該趁這個機會，將多年來的「分割並對抗某些特定人民群體」的心態轉換到「團結所有人民以對抗馬英九專政」的層次，用「希望」喚起民眾，而不是用嘲弄、咒罵、抗爭或威脅。也只有朝這個「帶給所有人民希望」的方向走，才能贏回民心，才能用民主的方式（選票）讓馬政權下台。

如果台灣知識份子不想建構一個「全民台灣」的正面藍圖，而一直繼續在人民之間「劃圈子分你我」，那我們的所有能量與付出將會繼續不斷地強化對手弱化自己，並逼更多可能支持者含淚投票給國民黨。這樣走下去，台灣未來的勝負存亡，恐怕只能聽天命了。

因此，現階段台派知識份子的最關鍵的一步，就是如何拿掉人民心中對台灣派的恐懼感，讓人民在面對馬英九的虛偽無能所帶來的困境與迷惘中，能夠看到另一個希望。

結束這篇文章之前，我想做一個小小的呼籲：請台灣派知識份子用『全民台灣』的心境與口號來取代那些分割民眾的心態與口號，並以此為「台灣新希望」來號召人民。我相信這是台派知識份子應該擔起來的責任。

但是這次，就讓我爽爽快快地幹個徹底吧！

2009-07-28T11:18:00.011+08:00

「一哥發嫂」這件事最恐怖的不是赤裸裸的歧視，
而是他們根本完全沒有知覺那是歧視。
~ Plurker 不來恩 @ here ~

馬政權的經濟部長尹啟銘對他主導的充滿岐視的 ECFA 漫畫說帖 (見「ECFA 漫畫說帖：一個撕裂社會、製造族群對立的文宣」）這樣說：

一哥歧視台南人?尹啟銘道歉

宣導ＥＣＦＡ漫畫代言人惹火台南人！經濟部所創造的卡通人物「一哥」出身台南，被形容對人生要求得過且過、從沒實際行動是一個只會說大話的人；台南縣長蘇煥智相當不能苟同，要求立即全面回收文宣、經濟部長尹啟銘道歉，否則將續發動抗議。

對此經濟部長尹啟銘昨晚表示，若造成台南鄉親的不舒服，他願意表達歉意。經部次長鄧振中也強調，部長自己就是台南人，沒有理由不尊重同鄉，更沒有族群歧視的意味，希望民眾不要誤會。

由噗友向蘇縣長反映應積極向經濟部抗議的「一哥」、「發嫂」經濟部文宣卡通人物，蘇縣長乍見形容一哥的內文差點沒昏倒，他認為，如此形容一哥實在太欺負人。

文宣內的一哥是台南人、五專畢、本土傳產業務員、人格特質是操閩南語音的台灣國語，對人生要求是得過且過，攸關自身權益也會全力以赴（例如買早餐，老闆少找五塊錢也必定會力爭討回來），因有分穩定工作，每天嘻哈過日，不懂得自我提昇，沒有危機意識，不了解ＥＣＦＡ，在人云亦云之下，擔心兩岸簽訂後，可能會面臨裁員。

而相對於一哥的發嫂，被形塑為精通四種語言的北部職業婦女，立委葉宜津認為，此舉是刻意挑起族群意識，明顯是「范藍欽」思想翻版；蘇縣長也很不爽地表示，文宣漫畫中的一哥、發嫂兩位角色的定位，刻意對台南同胞負面的定位，實在欺侮人，在身分證已取消省籍、族群欄之後，政府公開行銷政策將籍貫、族群貼上標籤，挑起族群的矛盾，而且歧視台南人，讓人看了很難過。

經濟部昨日也表示，經濟部製作的ＥＣＦＡ漫畫，原意是希望藉由漫畫方式，以較活潑的手法來宣導ＥＣＦＡ，絕未有族群歧視意味。晚間尹啟銘也強調，漫畫人物創造時，原來並無賦與身分背景，只是同仁希望以活潑方式呈現，才臨時加入身分，完全沒有任何負面意涵。

尹啟銘保證，往後宣傳時不會再有這樣的背景，希望大家回歸漫畫本身所要傳達的內容，不要再與意識形態扯上關係。

一個女生被強姦，大聲喊救命。一個路人上前制止強姦犯。

強姦犯說：『若造成這位女士的不舒服，我願意表達歉意。』

口裡這樣說，底下的強暴動作並沒有停下來。

強姦犯說：『我原意是希望藉由做愛的方式，以較快樂的手法來宣導愛的滋味，絕未有強姦意味。』

並說：『我保證往後強姦時不會再讓對方不舒服，希望大家回歸做愛本身所要傳達的內容，不要再與意識形態扯上關係。』

『但是最重要的是：這次就先讓我爽爽快快地幹個徹底吧！』

強姦犯的犯行雖然被當場抓包，但因為來來往往的行人對這件事的視若無睹，我們已經確定：在這樣的國度裡，該無助的女孩一定會持續被強暴，而且該強暴犯將不會受到任何法律制裁。

台灣人啊！你們到底想要建什麼樣的國啊？

ECFA 漫畫說帖：一個撕裂社會、製造族群對立的文宣

2009-07-25T01:02:00.023+08:00

為了強行推銷連馬政府官員自己都不知道內容是什麼的 ECFA，經濟部經過專家學者的設計，推出了 ECFA 說帖的四格漫畫，主要是兩位主角一哥與發嫂的對話。經濟部還特別為了這兩位代言漫畫人物的身份做了簡介：

	反對 ECFA 的一哥：	贊成 ECFA 的發嫂：
年齡：	45歲	40歲
籍貫：	台南（閩南人）	新竹（客家人）
職業：	傳統製造業業務	貿易公司主管
學歷：	五專畢	大學畢，現於 EMBA 進修中
人格　特質：	操台灣國語，對人生得過且過，是只會說大話的人。對 ECFA 完全不瞭解，擔心兩岸簽訂 ECFA 後，可能會因公司面臨營運困難而被裁員。	已婚職業婦女，個性積極，精通國台英日語，總以客觀角度看待事物，具求知精神及理財觀念。對 ECFA 議題相當瞭解。

上述人物描述裡的岐視意味，以及看似經過巧妙設計的、明目張膽的挑起族群對立的用詞，讓人震驚。

首先，反不反對 ECFA，跟籍貫有什麼關係？

以前政府在身份證顯示的資料中，拿掉「籍貫」一欄，目的不就是要化解族群對立嗎？現在政府竟然公然拿「籍貫」來貼標籤？

為什麼又必須選「台南人」？台南是前總統陳水扁的故鄉，台南縣市是泛綠到現在還沒有嘗到選舉敗績的地方，可以說，台南是泛綠支持者的重鎮。把「台南人」跟那些負面的人格描述連在一起，一來讓民眾在閱讀該說帖時，不知不覺在潛意識中被灌輸「泛綠＝低級」的醜化印象，二來又不著痕跡地將阿扁以及阿扁支持者醜化。

這一招實在太高明，沒有情緒激動、沒有齜牙咧嘴、沒有髒話罵人，在一個平鋪直述的過程中，暗暗地把幾個因素：泛綠、台灣人、台南人、阿扁、阿扁支持者、低級、不求上進、台灣國語、沒腦袋，全部緊緊地綁在一起。

值得特別注意的是，這個「籍貫」的影射，很巧妙地避開「外省人」。所提到的強烈對比是在用「客家人」與「閩南人」之間，兩者都是屬於「本省人」。這一招也很高，讀者在不知不覺間會被灌注這樣的印象：

（1）ECFA 的對立，發生於「本省人」之間；
（2）「高級」的本省人，是跟馬英九政府站在一起的；
（3）只要「低級」的本省人跟政府站在一起，就不再低級了；

在這種強烈暗示性文宣中，台灣人被分化高級、低級成兩派，除了將反對 ECFA 的那一派貼標籤成「低級」外，也加深了台灣人內部族群之間的對立，埋下了「分化台灣人」的種子。

用說帖來解釋政策，就針對 ECFA 的內容與影響來說就可以，根本不需要有任何跟政策無關的人格特質、籍貫學歷的描述。但是馬政權卻一定要利用這個機會，以「高級低級、北部南部」等強烈地域色彩與對比的人格特性賦予在一哥與發嫂的身上，利用此機會羞辱那些反對 ECFA 的人，並趁機分化台灣人、撕裂台灣社會。

一國政府，使用公權力公然用這種充滿族群岐視的文宣來使社會兩極化，台灣人能不憤怒嗎？

這個新聞一出來，已經有許多關心台灣的英文新聞與部落格寫了好幾篇長文討論並嚴厲批判。但是，在「郭冠英事件」中聲嘶力竭地起來抗議的台灣人，好像靜悄悄地沒有什麼動作，除了民進黨立委強力要求政府三天內撤回卡通之外，論壇裡也沒有多少抗議聲音，台灣知識份子也好像完全沒有注意到這則消息。

「郭冠英事件」畢竟是個人言行，但這個卡通卻是政府使用公權力公然對台灣人羞辱。照理講，這個漫畫羞辱台灣人的事情，應該比郭冠英事件要嚴重百倍千倍才是。台灣知識份子的靜默，似乎顯示對政治事件嚴重程度的敏感度不夠精確 ─ 好像那些當面使用侮辱性辱罵言語的個人，就應該發動所有台灣人的動能將之消滅；但使用隱性言語的暗示性醜化文宣，就好像不痛不癢無所謂。

馬政權對台灣知識份子這種「小不忍就反擊、慢火燒不在意」的心態，大概看得很清楚透徹，要不然也不敢在「郭冠英事件」的風暴之後，使出這一招來。

最後我必須提醒讀者：一個被撕裂的對立社會，不管你是藍綠，你都會是受害者。我建議所有反對撕裂族群、反對族群對立、反對社會兩極化的所有黨派與團體，不管藍綠黑白，聯合發表一個聲明，強烈抗議馬政府的撕裂台灣社會的行為，堅決要求馬政府撤回這個製造族群對立的羞辱性的文宣並公開道歉。

參考：

● 宣導ECFA暨漫畫代言人引薦記者會新聞稿
● ECFA說帖民黨批歧視台南人

英文報導與批判：

● How to insult a people（如何羞辱一個族群）
● ECFA Cartoons - bigotry as a tool of persuasion
(ECFA 卡通 ─ 以偏見為工具的說帖）
● MOEA Exploits Ethnic Stereotypes to sell ECFA
( 經濟部利用族群成見來推銷 ECFA)
● KMT 'High class mainlanders' deliver another insult to Taiwanese
（國民黨「高級大陸人」再一次地羞辱台灣人）
● More on the ECFA Cartoons: Guest Post
（客座文章：關於 ECFA 卡通的更多討論）
● DPP gives ministry three days to pull 'racist' comic
（DPP 給經濟部三天時間撤回族群岐視的卡通）

不要把人民當敵人 ─ 我看「藍綠對決」

2009-07-16T00:18:00.006+08:00

在「媒抗加油站」跟網友討論「選舉要不要避開藍綠對決」的話題。

如果光是針對「選舉要不要避開藍綠對決」來討論，那必須考慮：以「藍綠對決」的姿態，跟「避開藍綠對決」，哪一個勝算比較大。

假設我們可以概括地將台灣分成三大「力量」：泛綠、泛藍、政府。前兩者屬民間，後者屬公權。

民眾的取向會一直在變，就看出來競選的黨派、人選，是不是讓他們放心投你一票。因此，藍綠中間的界線，事實上不是固定不變的。

也就是說，雖然泛藍很多死忠支持者，但是，某些情況下，他們還是有可能支持泛綠的候選人。泛綠曾經贏過總統大選，就是一個鐵證。

但是，目前的「政府」這個力量，卻是永遠不可能給泛綠任何甜頭的。也就是說，這是一個固定不變、永遠會欺壓人民的政權。

之所以會採取「政府與人民」、「變與不變」這樣的區分方法，主要是要認清「永遠的敵人」跟「可能會變成戰友」的兩股力量的差別。

我們的最終目標，是要排除這個「永遠是敵人的政權」，而不是排除「泛藍」。

泛綠永遠也沒有辦法排除「泛藍」；即使給泛綠連續執政一百年兩百年，還是會有泛藍存在。一個多元化社會本來就要有不同的立場看法才是健康的。

因此，泛綠應該把目標放在「如何讓泛藍的圈子縮小」，而不是「消滅或排除泛藍」。

既然只是「縮小」而不是「消滅」，那就表示，策略上泛綠必須想辦法將相當大部分的泛藍支持者轉變成戰友。

「藍綠對決」的問題就在這裡 ── 如果泛綠把泛藍當成對決的敵人，那要如何讓他們變成泛綠的戰友？如何使他們變成「抵制專制政權」的幫手？

讀者應該不難想像，那種結果是不可能的。你不可能在「把對方當敵人」的同時，還冀望他能支持你。因此，「藍綠對決」的最可能結果，就是逼得這些泛藍支持者不得不當泛綠的敵人，使他們往馬政權靠得更緊。

跟著這個脈絡，泛綠的策略，應該以「聯合所有民眾，淘汰殖民政權」為方針；泛綠的敵人，是把台灣當殖民的馬政權，而不是有可能支持泛綠的台灣人民。

因此，泛綠在為台灣未來奮鬥的時候，一定要認清楚真正的敵人在哪裡。千萬不要錯把台灣人民當作對決的對象。

目無法紀的蔡守訓與台北地院用違法盜錄的看守所對話延長對扁的羈押

2009-07-14T11:31:00.010+08:00

(Note: English version of this article with similar content: here )

台北地方法院昨天下令第三次延長已經被非法羈押了 227 天的前總統陳水扁的羈押，時間由 7 月 26 日開始到 9 月25日共兩個月。(北院認定干擾審判扁三度延押)

我必須提醒台灣民眾，這個判決顯示了審理扁案的當庭法官蔡守訓及台北地院和議庭是如何地目無法紀。

這個延長羈押判決的主要理由，是台北地院認定陳前總統在看守所接見他的幕僚時指使他的幕僚向看守所外的人士求助：

合議庭先從台北看守所接見會面的錄音譯文，認定扁雖被羈押，仍不時透過會面接見，指導劉導等相關幕僚透過外力，明示應聯合其他個人或團體聲援。

台北地院和議庭引用看守所所錄到的陳水扁跟他幕僚的對話內容，指控陳前總統透過幕僚「借助民進黨主席蔡英文施壓、利用連署等方式干擾審判」，並以之為延長羈押陳前總統的主要理由。

好，「引用看守所所錄到的陳水扁跟他幕僚的對話內容」，請讀者深吸一口氣，然後再往下讀。。。

在今年一月底，大法官已經對「對看守所羈押人犯會客進行錄音」認定為違憲 (大法官：對羈押禁見被告律見時錄音違憲)：

司法院大法官會議今天做出釋字第654號解釋，認為羈押法中，看守所對羈押禁見被告與律師律見時全程錄音的規定違憲，應自5月1日起失去效力，錄音所獲資訊也將沒有證據能力。

今年 4 月 16日，立法院初審通過羈押法部分條文修正草案（台立院初審被告會見律師不得錄音錄影）：

立法院司法及法制委員會今天初審通過羈押法部分條文修正草案，律師接見被告時，看守所擬不得錄影、錄音；修正條文也規定看守所得檢查被告與辯護人往來文書及相關資料。

4月28日立法院三讀通過 (台羈押法三讀看守所不得錄影錄音)：

台灣立法院28日通過「羈押法」部份修正條文，為了保障羈押被告的訴訟權，未來看守所不能錄影或錄音被告與其律師的會見情況，至於過去被告在看守所的言語、發行書信等內容可做為偵查、審判時參考的規定也一併刪除。

也就是說，看守所會客錄音，不但被大法官認定為違憲而且立法院已經立法通過禁止，是一個徹底違法的行為。

很明顯地，蔡守訓法官跟台北地方法院完全將司法踩在角底下 ── 不但違法的錄音行為沒有中斷，而且竟然還膽敢將這些違法的錄音拿來做為迫害陳前總統的根據。

由這件事可知，蔡守訓這班無法無天的亂臣賊子再一次地將政治意圖凌駕憲法之上，更加證實了針對陳前總統的司法官司是一場有計謀的政治迫害。對這些披著法官的外衣、實則甘為執行馬政權政治迫害的「馬前足」來說，法律不過是他們用來鬥爭政敵的工具；他們把自己放在司法之上，不必遵循任何什麼法律規範，甚至連憲法也不在他們眼中。

看到這些，台灣人要多祈禱，祈禱自己還有所愛的家人朋友，這一輩子千萬不要落入這些人手中。

補充:

南方論壇一位網友 vedo 在討論欄（目無法紀的蔡守訓與台北地院）中認為延押裁決並不違法：

1. 自今年5月1日起，羈押中的被告與律師見面時，監所將不得再予錄音、監聽，僅可以派員觀看，看不能聽聞，即「監看不與聞」；但大法官會議並未禁止對被告與親友見面時錄音。

2. 針對"對受羈押被告與辯護人接見時監聽、錄音所獲得之資訊，得以作為偵查或審判上認定被告本案犯罪事實之證據..." 在此範圍內係已解釋為妨害被告防禦權之行使，且牴觸憲法保障訴訟權之規定。但法院之延押庭所作出的是延押"裁定書"，既非和檢察官之偵查有關，也不是法官對犯罪事實之認定而於審判上所作出的"審判書"。

陳水扁跟他幕僚的對話內容既非羈押被告與律師、辯護人之律見談話內容，自無辯護人協助被告所行使的防禦權受侵害之問題，而羈押被告與親友見面時的錄音，也不在釋字第654號的解釋保障範圍內。

北院原本最初對陳水扁是作出羈押禁見之裁定，即陳水扁僅能律見，但到第二次羈押時，是羈押但不禁見，陳水扁因而忽略看守所仍可對羈押被告與親友見面時進行監聽、錄音的事情。而昨日法官再根據此錄音內容認為陳水扁有逃亡、串供及其他干擾審判進行之認定，而作出延押的裁定，本就無違憲的問題。

vedo 網友指出大法官釋字第654號並無限制羈押單位針對被羈押人與其親友會面之對話進行錄音。

這點屬實。但該釋號也有提到原羈押法第二十八條為違法，而該條文已經由立法院三讀通過予以刪除。該條文內容在現在的羈押法已經看不到，但其內容可以找得到：

被告在所之言語、行狀、發受書信之內容可供偵查或審判上之參考者，應呈報檢察官或法院。

羈押法的官方英文網頁更新比較慢，現在還可以看到第二十八條：

If the content of the speeches, conducts, and sent and received mails of a defendant can provide information for criminal investigation and trial, they shall be reported to public prosecutor or district court.

這一條被刪除，表示該條文的規定有偏差，而該條文所指的並沒有侷限在「被羈押人與律師」的對話，而是被羈押人在看守所的所有書信與言行。

因此，以「與被羈押人對話者並非律師」為由來合理化「錄音」並以之做為不利於被羈押人的裁決，是對該法條的扭曲。

至於 vedo 提到的第二點，個人認為「錄音違憲」的判決與立法院修改羈押法之精神，在於制止檢方利用公權力阻止、妨礙被羈押人為自己辯護的權力與機會。釋憲與修法兩者都沒有規定這樣的精神只限於「審判」，而「羈押」本身的原因之一當然是為了檢方「利於偵查」，要不然何必羈押。

如果再仔細地思考被認為違憲而刪除的第二十八條，可以知道，不止被羈押人與任何訪客的對話不能被錄音或拿來做為對被羈押人不利的證詞，連被羈押人在看守所中的任何言論、行為、書寫，都受到法律保障而不能拿來做為不利於被羈押人的工具。

基於上述理由，個人認為 vedo 的解釋有缺陷，蔡守訓法官與台北地方法院的行為確為違法。

Lawless Taipei District Court extends Chen's detention based on illegal taping

2009-07-14T04:52:00.023+08:00

(註：中文版請看這裡)

Taipei District Court issues an order to extend the former president Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) detention the 3rd time, beginning from 7/26 to 9/25, adding 2 more months on top of the already lengthy detention of 227 days. (北院認定干擾審判扁三度延押)

I want to highlight one of the brazen law encroachments made by the collegiate bench and the presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓）.

The main reason for this detention extension is that they argue Chen instructs his staff to communicate with people outside to help him:

合議庭先從台北看守所接見會面的錄音譯文，認定扁雖被羈押，仍不時透過會面接見，指導劉導等相關幕僚透過外力，明示應聯合其他個人或團體聲援。

The collegiate bench uses the transcript of the recorded conversations (between Chen and his staff when Chen's staff visited him in the detention center) to argue that, although Chen is detained, he continuously meets and instructs his staff Liu Dao (spelling?) to use outsiders to help him.

The collegiate bench cited the conversations as evidence that Chen is asking outsiders to help him, which is considered - by Tsai and the collegiate bench in Taipei District Court - 'interfering with the justice' and thus the main reason for the extended detention.

Now, take a deep deep deep breath ---

The recording of detainees' meeting with their guests is declared illegal (i.e., it is against the Constitution) by the Grand Justices in January this year, and an order is issued to stop the recording after May 1st !

It is obvious that Judge Tsai and his collegiate bench completely ignore the order -- not only the recording continues, but also the content of illegal taping is used against Chen now !!!

Tsai and Taipei District Court have once again put their agenda above the Constitution and prove that the prosecution of Chen is political oriented and no boundary -- even the Constitution -- will be followed.

Update, seriously:

I took down this post for a couple of hours, because one netter vedo has counter arguments against my points (here, in Chinese though), and I want to make sure I get it right. To be short, vedo argues that although the decision of the Grand Justices ( 大法官釋字第654號 ) says that recording the detainee's meeting with defense lawyers is illegal, the decision doesn't forbid the recording between detainees and any one other than the defense lawyer. Thus recording of conversation between Chen and his staff is legal.

He missed the point that in the decision, the Grand Justices says that the Art.28 of the (original) Detention Act is illegal. The Detention Act was later revised on April, 28th to delete that article. The content of deleted Art. 28:

If the content of the speeches, conducts, and sent and received mails of a defendant can provide information for criminal investigation and trial, they shall be reported to public prosecutor or district court.

That is, what is deemed illegal doesn't limit to the conversations between the detainee and the defense lawyer.

That is, not only the conversations a detainee has during a meeting with any guests are protected, but also, anything the detainee says and writes in the detention center (not in a meeting) is under protection of the law and shouldn't be used against him/her.

Brief summary of political persecution against Chen Shui-bian

2009-07-11T02:31:00.003+08:00

The linked article below (in Chinese) briefly summarizes the judiciary injustice against CSB.

扁案為什麼會政治化？-----從扁媽為子哭冤說起

The judiciary injustice against CSB has been repeatedly raised in English blogs and by international scholars since the end of last year.

But in Taiwan, even pan green paid little or no attention at all to it, not to mention blue supporters. Even when the DPP chairwoman Tsai decides to make launch to fight for CSB's human right lately, her appeal mentions only the extended detention with a term of "judiciary injustice".

Without laying out the "sign of persecution in almost every single step" in CSB's case, the focus on the extended detention could easily be mistaken or distorted into an attempt to interfere the law practice.

It is therefore critical for articles like the linked one being circulated more often and more widely.

The trigger of Uyghur-Han Clash in Xinjiang-- Chinese Killing Uyghurs in Guangdong

2009-07-08T09:03:00.037+08:00

A deadly ethnic clash occurred on July 5th in Xinjiang, China, between Uyghurs and Han Chinese when the Chinese government launched an armed suppression against originally peaceful protest, resulting in 156 deaths (according to the China government).

The tension between Uyghurs and Hans have been high for decades. The trigger of the current protest is another ethnic clash occurred earlier far away in Guangdong, where a rumor is posted about six Xinjiang guys raped a girl ('No Rapes' in Riot Town),

Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have said they found no evidence that ethnic minority Uyghur laborers had raped two Chinese girls, a rumor they blamed for last week's ethnic fighting at a toy factory in Shaoguan city.

According to official media reports, police also detained a former worker at the city's Xuri toy factory for posting the rumor on the Internet in the first place.

"Six Xinjiang boys raped two innocent girls at the Xuri Toy Factory," ran the text of the posting, the official Xinhua news agency reported, quoting a Shaoguan municipal spokesman.

Outraged by what the post says, the Chinese in Guangdong started a deadly ethnic cleansing against Uyghurs in a toy factory in Shaoguan city, Guangdong. The following horrifying video is apparently shot by Chinese witnesses inside the factory. It was posted on Sohu.com, taken down, and republished several times. Take a look on how hundred of enraged Chinese beat several unarmed Uyghurs to death:

The horrifying scene shows that several people running for life through an narrow passage, chased by people holding sticks of unidentifiable materials. They eventually took their last breaths after being beaten repeatedly by the angry crowd.

Starting from 1'30", you can hear those who shot the video commented in Chinese:

"還不死啊？我肏！"
"How come is he/she not dead yet? Fuck!"

"才怪！"
"Weird if he/she isn't dead."

"這個是女的吧？"
"Is that one a female?"

Following the question, the camera points to a scene where 8~9 people holding sticks and hammering down on a non-responsive person. A lifeless body left on the ground when the crowd dispersed.

"這個跪下來。。。"
"This one kneels down ..."

"那邊還有一個"
"Another one over there"

"好啊好啊!"
"Great! Great!"

Then in shouting,

"肏死他！"
"Fuck him/her dead !"

"肏他媽的屄, 敢摔倒 !"
"Fuck his/her mohter's cunt, he/she dares to fall down !"

The narrow passage where the killings occurred is between two tall buildings that look like apartments. It appears that residents of both buildings stood in their balconies watching the killings, making uproars, shooting the video as though they were watching a gladiator killing show in ancient Rome, when unarmed people in the passage run for their lives. A vivid demonstration of what the term "terrorism" defines.

Remember that the Rome was not built in one day. Neither is the tension between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. It started in 1949 with China's invasion to occupy the East Turkestan, followed by decades of systematic suppression of Uyghur culture and history by the China government. The language, building, books of Uyghur origin are systematically destroyed. Millions of Han Chinese were forced by the government to migrate into Xinjiang, resulting in effective dilution of Uyghur population in the area, the exact same way the Chinese government applied to dilute Tibetans in Tibet!

The Chinese government took a completely new and refined approach in terms of the media control to define the incident as nothing but a riot initiated by Uyghurs. They (1) announced the news and revealed the photo and footages before the news has a chance to spread; (2) block all internet connections in/out of the area; (3) had press conference and allowed journalists to visit in confined and well guarded places. It seems that the only thing not new is to blame it on the victim group.

J. Michael Cole, a columnist, editorialist and editor at Taipei Times, in his excellent blog post writes - among other things - about the CCP propaganda machine (Xinjiang finally explodes, Taipei remains silent) .

More links to share about Uyghurs and East Turkestan:

First of all, brief Q&As about Uyghurs and Xinjiang:

Q&A: Troubles in Xinjiang
Q&A: China's restive Uighurs
For how China is annihilating the entire culture of Uyghur, watch the short video clips:

Uighurs' struggle to retain cultural identity -...
China's 'Go West' policy fuels ethnic tensions ...

and listen to the desperate call by Alim Seytoff, spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, Vice-President of Uyghur-American Association and director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, in a radio interview (Tune in: Online radio show on Uighur unrest in China);

Uyghur leader in exile, Rebiya Kadeer, who is seen by some as the Dalai Lama of Uyghur, also the one the China government blames this incident to, speaks out:

Check out Al Jazeera, a prominent Muslim news media. Some of their coverages on Uyghur:
Another video clip:

Uighurs Provoke Beijing by Michael Turton;
Reports from the West from The China Beat;

The bloody suppression by the China government invites condemnations from the international community, which certainly doesn't include Ma Ying-jeou's regime that considers Taiwan is just a part of China.

The ethnic clash also triggers retaliation of Han Chinese. As this report from the Liberty Time (漢、維再爆衝突新疆緊繃) indicates, Han Chinese in China go on the street seeking Uyghurs to beat.

From what is known, I believe larger scale and more widely spread retaliations from both sides are likely to happen, or probably already happened but covered under the tightly information control of China government.

A lot more information is available on the net. I would like to end this article with this:

What is happening now in Xinjiang happened before in Taiwan in the 228 massacre back in 1947 when many Taiwanese were killed by the occupying Chinese Nationalist (KMT), and is happening now in Tibet by the occupying Chinese Communist Party. The similarities are:

1) Chinese forces invade and take over the land;
2) Chinese forces make use of the resources, squeeze the locals to the brim of famine and death;
4) Local cultures were systematically annihilated;
5) Locals will either be dead anyway, or live like animals, so the revolution is their only way out;
6) Massacre by the Chinese follows, at the same time blaming the victims;
7) Massive government-forced migration of Han Chinese into the locals to dilute the population of local ethic population. This is the only feature that hasn't happened in Taiwan. Yet.

This process has happened before, is happening now, and will continue to happen in the future. Observing how the current Ma Ying-jeou Regime annexes Taiwan to China, it's very likely that Taiwan will experience it the 2nd time in a short span of less than a hundred years. With that, Taiwan will make another mark in human history -- following the mark of peaceful democracy progress Taiwan had earned -- as the first country to rush herself into the slavery via the path of democracy.

Echo Taiwan

2012 Election Controversy: Official Vote Rigging?

689

Tsai will get at least 47% votes -- UDN Editorial

Future Market predicts: Ma falls behind by 8% and keeps falling fast

The Shutting Down of a Reputable Poll Center

Large scale hacks to Tsai's office appears to come from China and Ma government

More on the speech freedom case of a food blogger

Wrote negative comments on food in Taiwan and get heavy punishment

Tsai Ing-wen for 2012

Tsai Ing-wen is now the focus of both support and defaming

Be a party believing in the land and the people - Tsai Ing-wen's new year wish

民進黨走統一路線？

眾皆感傷墮淚，惟後主嬉笑自若

世世代代的含辱吞忍－楊淑君受辱事件的省思

仇恨花園 － 郝龍斌大安公園造勢晚會

馬政府指示：以後中國人來訪，原本沒有國旗的地方禁止出現國旗

Total of 7917 Contestants in the 2010 Mayor, Councilor and Borough Elections

預測國民黨越輸越多，政大未來事件交易所乾脆關站止血 ?

自立晚報淪為國民黨的打手？

公視對馬政府打壓新聞自由的陳述

Ma Ying-jeou's Anti-Corruption Freezes When It Comes to Taipei Flora Scandal

中國孕婦大量湧進香港產子

Serious Data Leak Puts National Security in Jeopardy

朱立倫是精神錯亂還是把人民當白痴？

附錄

Delusional Eric Chu and KMT's Suicidal Campaign Strategy

KMT's Suicidal Campaign Strategy

References

政治人物是人民實現理想的「工具」

台灣沒有「不要跟誰談統一」的問題 ─── 解析李瑞木的「不反中」論述 (1)

Premier Wu Got Sued for Calling Independence Supporters Idiots

國際印象 ─ 台派棄守的戰場

「台獨」是一個與生活態度無關的政治口號嗎？

KMT's 5-City Campaign Strategy: Admit Incompetence on All Fronts

五都選舉國民黨恐將策反南二都

Ma to Send More Military Instructors to Campus -- Elementary Schools Included

蔡英文的宏觀視野與台灣全民的新出路

Pan Green's Mentality Behind the CSB Case -- And a Replay in Kaoshiung

Kaoshiung Folds under China's Pressure to Kick Rebiya's Film out of the Festival

Ma Ying-jeou becomes the gustiest by wooing China

Privilege - the core spirit of Chinese society

Dalai Lama accepts green camp's invitation to visit Taiwan

Ma Ying-jeou in the most crucial hours of Morakot

馬英九下令地方首長到其他縣市救災的合法性

向國民黨認罪求饒的後果

台派知識份子的責任：建構一個「屬於所有台灣住民」的全民台灣

但是這次，就讓我爽爽快快地幹個徹底吧！

ECFA 漫畫說帖：一個撕裂社會、製造族群對立的文宣

不要把人民當敵人 ─ 我看「藍綠對決」

目無法紀的蔡守訓與台北地院用違法盜錄的看守所對話延長對扁的羈押

Lawless Taipei District Court extends Chen's detention based on illegal taping

Brief summary of political persecution against Chen Shui-bian

The trigger of Uyghur-Han Clash in Xinjiang-- Chinese Killing Uyghurs in Guangdong

仇恨花園－郝龍斌大安公園造勢晚會