Taiwan's president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) graduated from Harvard Law School, but unlike his opponent Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and his predecessor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Ma never passed the bar exam.
Yet a simple Google search locates multitudinous examples of people calling Ma a "lawyer." Where did this meme come from, and can it be stopped? That all depends on whether you, the reader, fall for the media's lies.
Look who's fluffing Ma Ying-jeou!
With Saturday's election results putting Ma's win at the top of Google News' English-language page, and with the lie about him being right in the first sentence of so many articles, it's more than I can silently endure.
A March 23, 2008 search of Google News for ["Ma Ying-jeou" "Harvard-educated lawyer"]
Notice the article from the Malaysia Sun there, which is already calling Ma "president" almost two months prior to his inauguration instead of "president-elect."
Furthermore, his party isn't just called "the Nationalists" or "the Nationalist Party" -- it's the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT or 中國國民黨), as the Mandarin version of their own web site and political ads will tell you:
Why doesn't most of the English-language media use the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) full name like the party does in Mandarin on its own web site?
A-gu (阿牛) tells us that the China Times (中國時報) is saying that "79% are happy about Ma's victory." How is that even possible when he only got 58.45% of the vote? (Yo, Raj, the key word is "happy.")
All the "fluffing" has got to stop. Come May 20, 2008, let's see if the media treats Ma the same way they did Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). I won't be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. They're already calling his wife "Big Sister Mei-ching."
Peace? People are suggesting that things will be more peaceful with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the presidential office and with a 3/4 majority in the legislature. I'd like anybody who believes that to take a look at this collection of recent clips of the pots who would call kettles black:
Silver linings? Ma's willingness (so far) to use English with the international media may let more people around the world hear his moment-to-moment self-contradictions. Then again, that would require a slightly diligent media instead of one that acts as his "fluffer." - - - * Well, he might be considered an "abogado" in Mexico, but not too many other places. Legalities: Taiwan, 台灣, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Taiwan 2008 Presidential Election, 2008年台灣總統大選, YouTube, media, 媒體, memes, 大腦模仿病毒
The short story is that because of the Chinese Nationalist Party''s (KMT) on-again, off-again boycott of both referendums, the threshold was not met for either one. Therefore, even though 94.01% of the ballots cast for the DPP said "yes" to their proposal to join the United Nations (UN) using the name "Taiwan," and more than 84% of those cast for the KMT-proposed/-boycotted referendum to "'rejoin' the international body using the name 'Republic of China' or any other 'practical' title that would uphold the country's dignity" also said "yes," both referendums failed. There's also the issue of the US government's "denunciation" of the referendums.
Much more info behind those links, including some partisan arrests for suspected vote buying which was nothing like the discussions in non-hushed tones that happened right in front of me yesterday.
The tautology of not throwing hissy fits Another article gets the headline "Foreign observers laud peaceful poll." Duh! The simple reason it was peaceful is because DPP supporters don't riot when their candidates lose elections, unlike the KMT, which has done so many times before. Be sure not to miss Lien Chan's (連戰) low-class hissy fit described within that very article. Ballots, not bullets: Taiwan, 台灣, United Nations, 聯合國, Taiwan 2008 Presidential Election, 2008年台灣總統大選, referendum, 公投
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has won today's presidential election. The web site of Taiwan's Central Election Commission (CEC) says that Ma obtained 58.45% of the vote (7,658,724 votes), and that his only competitor, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the DPP, got 41.55% (5,445,239 votes). With 17,321,603 eligible voters this time around, that gives a turnout of 75.65%, despite the good weather which defied forecasts all across Taiwan.
None of the "dirty tricks" the KMT claimed the DPP would pull came to be, including fires, accusations of sexual misconduct, assassination attempts, or surprise press conferences.
And since the KMT candidate won, there are no riots tonight like there were in 2004, which is about the only "positive" thing I have to say about this.
What's next? A-gu (阿牛) has some good suggestions about changes the DPP needs to make. I'll save my own thoughts on this for later, but I think his suggestions are a good start.
In the meantime, there will obviously be a lot more fluffing of Ma Ying-jeou by the media, as indicated by this BBC profile of Ma whose first sentence begins, "The US-educated lawyer..."
Ma studied law, but he is not a lawyer because he never passed the bar exam.
Keep an eye out for articles in the English-language media which will say that Ma has "brought peace to Taiwan." As I hinted at above, the lack of pan-blue riots may seem "peaceful," but when pan-blue legislators come show up at your door doing "surprise inspections" or when you go through a "trial by pan-blue media," the feeling will be a bit different. Also, the kind of "peace" the media will be describing is that which comes from kowtowing to the bullies in Beijing who had no right to begin with to create the difficulties that have been faced by Taiwan.
Jonathan Adams recently wrote about Taiwan's DPP supposedly losing the youth vote, backing up his claims with numbers from the very blue United Daily News (聯合報) and all sorts of pan-blue talking points. Well, it certainly won't be the case if Freddy Lim (林昶佐) has anything to say about it.
Take a look at the can-do attitude and positive energy displayed in the music videos below, which I hope to see reflected across Taipei and all of Taiwan today:
向逆轉隊致敬，我們一定逆轉勝！ (Translation: Saluting the comeback team: We'll surely turn the tide!) Video via the Freddy Action blog.
SUMMARY: Four legislators from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) -- a party which frequently claims their opponents will use "dirty tricks" (奧步) to win the election -- initiated actions this past Wednesday which arrogantly overstepped their authority. Just 10 days before the presidential election, the legislators intruded into the campaign headquarters of those very opponents under the guise of conducting an "inspection." Such things are supposed to be handled by prosecutors (檢察官) with warrants.
Although it doesn't appear that they actually gained access to the campaign offices, they did abuse their authority by refusing the building's first-floor security's demands for them to sign in and by imagining that they have any such power to conduct "inspections" of private property.
[...] it is all nice and well that Ma apologized, but it shows he cannot control his party's legislators.
As Ma yesterday said that it was a public issue whether Hsieh's campaign was illegally leasing the office building, Hsieh said he had no problem discussing the issue. However, it was another issue for KMT legislators to barge into his campaign headquarters and then condemn the violence of his [meaning Hsieh's] team members.
"It is to mistake the effect for the cause," he said. "It is like a woman who is sexually harassed by a man and slaps the man on the face. The man turns around and then accuses the woman of brutality."
Whether they got "in the door" or not is not the issue here. It's about their intentions.
The DPP has subsequently produced the lease for their office space for the public to view and make up their own minds:
The lease agreement (Hsieh's campaign rented the office space under the company name 「美夢成真」, or "Dreams Come True") (Click image to enlarge) (See also the article which accompanied the above image in the Liberty Times [自由時報] print edition)
On Friday, KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) was still "urging the Executive Yuan to investigate whether or not Hsieh's camp had occupied the bank's property for free." Read on, and see behind the multiple curtains of this crazy mess.
(REMINDER: Hovering your cursor on most links in my posts will reveal extra information in a small pop-up.)
Villainy and vengeance Wednesday evening, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Alex Fai (費鴻泰) (caucus whip), Chen Chieh (陳杰), Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), and Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) (an officer in Shih Ming-teh's [施明德] "redshirt" army [紅衫軍]) went to DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) campaign headquarters in Taipei looking for information they claimed would show an illicit relationship between Hsieh and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) or that Hsieh's campaign was either paying unfairly-reduced rent or none at all.
It began earlier in the afternoon with an interpellation of First Bank manager (總經理) Huang Hsien-chuan (黃獻全) and Minister of Finance Ho Chih-chin (何志欽) at the Legislative Yuan by Alex Fai during which Fai says he wants the two others to accompany him to DPP headquarters the following morning, then suddenly changes his mind and wants to go "right away" (馬上). See the flip-flop between the 3:33 and 3:43 marks in the video below.
According to an article in Thursday's Taiwan News, they used the excuse that they were doing a "fire inspection." After the four ignored first-floor security, went up to Hsieh's office on the thirteenth floor, and then took the elevator down to the third floor -- where they were blocked in by campaign staff -- police were called to the scene. When police arrived, they began to escort the four legislators away (no one was being placed under arrest), but a large crowd had apparently already gathered outside.
Son-of-a-gangster Lo Ming-tsai fled the scene amidst the pushing and shoving going on between DPP supporters and the many police who were outside the offices. These supporters wanted to legally detain the three remaining suspects until prosecutors arrived. The police were able to remove the KMT legislators from the scene a couple of hours later after prosecutors finally arrived to verify the DPP's claims and the DPP unblocked the exits.
Alex Fai (費鴻泰) on Thursday I'm no Dr. Bill Frist, but I can detect neither an ear injury nor any signs of brain activity by watching this guy on TV. (Click image to enlarge)
As the KMT legislators were making their way to the police car, someone in the huge crowd that formed outside appears to have landed or nearly landed a blow on or just behind Fai's right ear, but in the footage of him "apologizing" for the incident Thursday afternoon, a medium close-up (above) didn't reveal any problems with his ear, chin, or any other part of the exterior of his head. TV images on Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon showed him variously in a wheelchair and on a hospital gurney. He has since conjectured that he's being persecuted because he is a "waishengren" (外省人) (his own term), or so-called "mainlander." (See video of that twisted excuse in Part 2 of the links here [21:11 on-screen "也許衝著我是外省人的關係"]).
Alex "Faker" Fai (費鴻「太過分」, screen right) "stretch-er-ing" the truth on Wednesday (Click image to enlarge)
KMT presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), then made a statement "denouncing" (譴責) the violence "on both sides," obfuscating the fact that if these members of his own party had stayed in the Legislative Yuan and not overstepped their authority, the day's events would not have occurred. Subsequent statements from Ma included half-hearted apologies which must be seen to be truly understood.
Who's to blame? If these four legislators did this without Ma's or KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung's (吳伯雄) knowledge or permission, shouldn't they be kicked out of the party? (Pre-completion update: Fai has offered to quit the party, but he wasn't kicked out.) If Ma and/or Wu did know about it, shouldn't they step down from their respective positions? And are the KMT's "apologies" really apologies when caucus whip Lin Yi-shih says that "these four legislators didn't do anything wrong." Is he advocating Gestapo-like tactics? What if the shoe were on the other foot?
Furthermore, can the KMT's "apologies" really count as apologies when a front-page ad in Thursday's United Daily News (聯合報) has Wu making the excuse that they "went to the wrong place at the wrong time"? Would it have been okay at "another time"?
These were not mere "rogue supporters" -- they were legislators, including a caucus whip and a convener of the Legislative Yuan Finance Committee. What the fuck kind of Bizarro World do these people live in?!
Why Wednesday? With a report by Next magazine (一週刊) just coming out alleging that KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) has US citizenship (or did during her legislative terms) and another story about Ma Ying-jeou's father Ma Ho-ling (馬鶴凌) having had an affair several years ago, one might suspect that Wednesday's incident was a KMT dirty trick to distract attention from these other things.
If, as Ma-the-son says, there's nothing to the green card story, why does he continue trying to divert everyone's attention toward the Central Election Commission's (CEC) report that said he doesn't have US citizenship when that's a horse of a completely different color?
Is this going to hurt Ma and help Hsieh to win the election? Will this event (四個笨蛋) be blamed if Hsieh wins the March 22 election the way those pesky "two bullets" (兩顆子單) were blamed when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) won in 2004? Only time will tell.
RELATED INFO: * SocialForce.tw provides links to video of the event which I haven't seen any of the news channels broadcasting. The video begins with still pictures unaccompanied by sound, but then you can hear DPP officials describing just what they were doing as it happened.
* "Dirty tricks"? I've got yer dirty tricks right here! Via Friday's China Post:
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A Taiwanese opposition lawmaker said Friday he will consider suicide if party presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou loses the presidential election on March 22.
Alex Fai of the opposition Nationalists said he felt extremely sad about the controversy surrounding an opposition invasion into the Taipei headquarters of Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh on Wednesday.
If the incident costs Ma his presidential victory, Fai said, "I will not exclude the possibility of ending my own life."
[...]
Before January's legislative poll, DPP lawmaker Wang Shih-cheng said he would jump into the sea if his party failed to win a single seat in the city of Taipei.
The Nationalists ended up with a clean sweep there, and Wang made good on his promise - though without any lasting ill effects.
If you even entertain the thought that Fai would do the same, you're a fool!
* Thursday's Taiwan News uses active verbs in the headline "KMT lawmakers cause chaos after storming Hsieh's office," telling readers just who did what as well as when and how they did it. (The link is to a cached version, because Taiwan News articles are inaccessible to non-subscribers after a week or so. I've saved the original page -- with images [try these links: 1, 2] -- as a PDF file for when the online version disappears.) Check out how Ma Ying-jeou deflects the blame:
Speaking in Chiayi yesterday, Ma expressed "regret" over the incident and censored the Hsieh camp for "violence."
* Thursday's China Post unsurprisingly makes it look like the incident happened spontaneously with the passive headline, First melee erupts as presidential race heats up. Note also that it's the "[f]irst" melee. Do they have inside information about plans for more such incidents? Foreigner in Formosa points out that the geographically-challenged newspaper hid the story. (I had found it via a Google search for info related to this incident.) While it was a front-page headline in the print edition (I saw it with my own eyes while I was at work), a link to the article was missing from the front page of the March 13, 2008 online edition (which I also verified with my own eyes). Try out their "select date" function at the bottom of their front page, and see for yourself.
* In this video from CTiTV, you can see that their videographer accompanied the four legislators in the elevator. The anchor says that their personnel "didn't see anyone kick or even touch the glass door" -- just 11 seconds after it appears that one of them does touch the door (1:50 in the video). Could it be that they're the only ones with a camera who saw it and that they're just not showing us the footage? Don't forget what the anchor just said, basically repeating what the reporter said around the 1:40 to 1:45 mark and what happened between the smoke and the mirrors. This report is presented as if the "evil DPP" set a "trap" for the "kind and gentle" KMT, as if the latter didn't decide on their own to show up at the headquarters of the former. And the more the reporter and anchor say that about the door "not being kicked," the more I suspect that it did happen.
Hsieh aides alleged that Fai and company kicked the door open to intrude. Fai said they all entered "peacefully."
"If I did," Fai said, "I'll quit as lawmaker and politics altogether."
His three colleagues vowed to follow suit after they offered an apology.
Lawmaker Lo Ming-tsai said he would resign as convener of the Legislative Yuan finance committee, should he have kicked open the door.
The other two legislators, Chen Chieh and Luo Shu-lei, also asked to be forgiven for their sally, which was intended to find out whether Hsieh paid for an extra office on the thirteenth floor of the bank's building without paying rent.
"Please produce evidence that we kicked in the door," all four said, "and we all would resign."
While Fai says he'll "quit ... politics altogether," Lo Ming-tsai -- the one who fled the scene before police arrived -- promises a much lesser sacrifice. Gee, I wonder why. (I also wonder if something is lost in translation here. Did they actually "kick [in/open]" any doors, or was it more like "barging in" or "intruding"?)
"It wasn't violence," Hsieh went on. He likened the free-for-all to a tit-for-tat. "Can you say a girl slapping a man trying to rape her is committing an act of violence?" he asked.
What Hsieh means there is that he doesn't accept Ma's description of the violence being "on both sides." You tell him, Frank!
* The BBC goes FUBAR with this story, claiming that "MPs from both sides were arrested." That did not happen on this planet, but the usual suspect's name (Caroline Gluck) appears in the story:
According to the BBC correspondent in Taipei, Caroline Gluck, the run-up to elections in Taiwan are normally heated affairs, but violence-free.
So the clash at the DPP campaign offices - the first case of any disorder ahead of this month's presidential elections - was widely reported, our correspondent adds.
I guess Gluck "forgot" about the assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) in March 2004, the gas bomber in December 2004, and so many other similar "violence-free" incidents. Michael Turton blogged this one in more detail while I was busy with this post.
* October 27, 2007: The KMT in Taiwan vs. the GOP in the USA, in which the "phony sanctimony and faux outrage" of the party that brought us George W. Bush is compared with that of the KMT.
* May 20, 2004: "United" only in their divisiveness, in which the losers of that year's election stand behind shields of irony while accusing Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of "hiding behind bulletproof glass." (Foiled yet again!)
Another poll released by the Southern Taiwan Society yesterday showed that Ma had the support of 41 percent of respondents, while Hsieh was backed by 38 percent.
Taiwan: Frank Hsieh & Ma Ying-jeou's second presidential debate
Televised March 9, 2008
As happened coincidentally with the first debate on February 24, I was busy with family matters, so I can't comment on the content just yet. But YouTube user ricky200708 has posted all of the videos from yesterday's debate between Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and compiled them in playlist form:
20-part YouTube playlist: "2008/03/09 第二場總統大選電視辯論會" (Translation: March 9, 2008 Second televised presidential debate
Notice the different elements from the usual YouTube player, including the arrows that will appear at the sides of the screen when you hover your cursor over the video, the thumbnails that will appear at the bottom, and the button to the right of Play/Pause which will show/hide the thumbnails. When the thumbnail view is enabled, you will also see smaller arrows to the left and/or right of the thumbnails, allowing you to see thumbnails and titles for the previous/next group of videos.
I was busy doing family things on Sunday, so I didn't get to see the debate between Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) -- candidates in Taiwan's 2008 presidential election to be held on March 22, 2008. However, videos of the debate have been uploaded to YouTube by others.
9'03" YouTube video: "2008/02/24 總統大選電視辯論會Part.01 如何改善通貨膨漲 -蔡孟珊" (Translation: Presidential Election Televised Debate Part 01: How can the effects of inflation be lessened? [question asked by] Tsai Meng-shan)
Above is part 1 of the debate, uploaded by YouTube user ricky200708. See the remaining 22 parts on his YouTube channel. I haven't had the time to watch the whole debate yet.
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