Illicit electioneering by the KMT

This is how they roll

Taiwan's current president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) frequently speaks about his "clean image," and after running an "anti-corruption" campaign, he told the public that "things would be better right away" (馬上就會好) when he took office on May 20, 2008.

However, things in Taiwan have gotten worse since that date in all kinds of ways.

But one thing hasn't changed a bit: the KMT's way of doing business.

In Taipei's Da-an District (大安區), for example, KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) was recently forced out of office after a scandal which revealed that she had held office illegally for 14 years while possessing dual nationality and had regularly lied to the public about it. A by-election to fill her vacated legislative seat is scheduled for tomorrow -- Saturday, March 28, 2009.

Read what the KMT was caught doing just two days before this election:

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors yesterday accused the Taipei City Government [led by the KMT's Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌)] of abusing municipal resources to campaign for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛) in tomorrow's legislative by-election, and urged municipal officials to maintain neutrality.

About a dozen staff from the Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs [台北市政府民政局] visited a traditional market in Da-an District (大安) to hand out pamphlets urging residents to vote tomorrow. However, two people wearing the department's vest were also spotted calling on residents to vote for Chiang.

It's a serious violation of administrative neutrality and we need to stop public servants from campaigning for a specific candidate in such an obvious way [...]

Here's the video:


2:25 YouTube video: "This is how the KMT rolls (中國國民黨就是這樣)"

Notice the vests the women are wearing. They belong to the Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs -- under a KMT government.

That's the way they roll -- and they do it in broad daylight! This time, it was captured on video.

I sure hope that the voters (even in the so-called "deep blue" Da-an District) will have enough sense to NOT vote for either of the pan-blue candidates in this election -- or in any other election, for that matter. Only then will Taiwan get back to making the kind of improvements that occurred due to the efforts of those who have worked so hard to build democracy here.

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Things in the KMT's trick bag: Taiwan, 台灣, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Taipei City, 台北市, Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs, 台北市政府民政局, elections, 選舉, Diane Lee, 李慶安, Da-an District, 大安區, Chiang Nai-shin, 蔣乃辛, Hau Lung-bin, 郝龍斌

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

KMT Wants Control of History

Since the late 1990s the Taiwan government has introduced a series of reforms in the local education designed in part to eradicate the Chinese colonialist history that was the norm during the era of one-party rule. Among these were changes in the textbooks. An important change was permitting local schools to select their own textbooks, rather than forcing all schools to use one textbook. This has led to great local variation in education, as well as immense profits for textbook makers. It has also led to a much greater focus on the history and culture of Taiwan.

Mayor Hau Lung-bin of Taipei recently announced an attempt to erect a separate textbook kingdom in northern Taiwan, a little taste of what will happen in 2008 if Ma Ying-jeou wins.

Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) came under fire yesterday from city councilors and student rights groups after he announced that a controversial "single version textbook" policy would take effect in the city in September 2008.

He also said that once the junior high school students educated under the new policy graduated in 2011, the city government, the Taipei County government, and the Keelung City government would jointly hold a new high school entrance examination for them.

The "single version textbook" policy requires schools to use specific textbooks edited by the government for every subject, in contrast to the current system that gives local schools the freedom to choose from a range of textbooks those that their students will use.

Hau denied that the purpose of the plan was to roll back the changes the DPP has made, but it can't be a coincidence that the areas named have traditionally been KMT strongholds where the Blues can count on control of the system to enforce their will. The Ministry of Education has already nixed the idea, but Hau has claimed the city government is not under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education. This claim is not empty; Taiwan's arcane system recognizes several levels of government, counties and cities like Taichung county or Changhua city, and then provinces (like Taiwan island and its associated islands) and municipalities, which are technically equivalent. Taipei and Kaohsiung are municipalities, and are technically equivalent to the whole island of Taiwan, a "province". Hence the mayors of these two cities have enormous clout in the system and jurisdictions are not as clear as they might be.

Hau can also count on sympathy because many around the island feel that the DPP's textbook decision has resulted in "chaos." Parents claim that the quality of the textbooks has fallen (it certainly isn't high, and from what I can tell, wasn't ever very good). The Blues can count on this in their drive to roll back DPP progress if they win in '08.

[Taiwan]