Chen's 10/10 speech

Politics Taiwan Politics
41

Feiren,

The point is not all 23 million ROC citizens agree with Chen’s Taidu amibitions, not even a majority. The vast majority wish to remain in status quo. The vast majority don’t wish to purchase arms.

Chen already know his limits, USA and PRC have stated in very clear terms what their tolerance levels are. Whether or not Chen is listening is a whole other matter.

What disturbs me the most was a Time magazine interview he gave last year. Chen implied he was like Jesus or a Messiah for Taidu cause. Let’s hope he can remain moderate and sane for another 3 years, and not drag the rest of us into some Holy Taidu war that we have no interested in entering.

42

So have a referendum, and let’s see what the majority want.

You don’t have to be a supporter of Taidu, to say

Brian

43

We already had one with the presidential election. Obviously we rejected the whole thing. We rejected not only the questions, we rejected the precedent of Taidu supporters were seeking.

In fact we have even protested the arms deal in public, outside the framework of the referendum. We want the luxury of drinking bubble tea.

We don’t believe in Taidu, we don’t want taidu. The vast majority of ROC citizens are quite content with Status Quo, despite what Taidu politicians would want you to believe.

44

Then why on earth do they keep voting for him? Are you trying to imply that the people who voted for him in March are somehow surprised by his actions? As far as I can see, the only people who have been surprised (and disappointed) by his actions are the TSU supporters who think he’s being much more concilliatory than he was on the campaign trail.

Never mind - now that everyone knows he’s less than keen on unification, the vast majority that you mention can vote against the DPP in the upcoming election. Isn’t it wonderful how democracy sorts these problems out?

So, the official US response to his 10/10 speech will have pleased you then.

As for the PRC response - it seems to be exactly the same response as they always give.

Yeah, I can see how his actions (like promising not to declare independence, excluding changes to territory from the constitutional change, continually trying to start talks with the PRC) make you think he’s hellbent on a war he can’t win. :loco:
I just hope the PRC government can remain(become?) sane for another 30 years, and not drag the rest of us into some Holy Reunification war that we have no interest in entering.

45

AC, your last post makes absolutely no sense and completely fails to adress the post of mine you quoted.

Another example of your usual debating tactic:

  1. Say something stupid and indefensible

  2. Ignore a rebutal of it

  3. Reply with something completely irrelevant and so stupid noone can understand what you are trying to say

  4. Moan about Taidu, the stolen election, and that Jap-loving Lee Denghui

:loco:

Brian

46

But the vast majority of the Taiwanese electorate who felt sufficiently concerned about this issue to cast a vote on it in the referendum expressed support for spending on defensive armaments. If I recall correctly, those in favour outnumbered those against by a ratio of at least ten to one.

47

[quote=“Omniloquacious”]
But the vast majority of the Taiwanese electorate who felt sufficiently concerned about this issue to cast a vote…[/quote]…and who weren’t deterred by KMT’s insistence that they not vote at all… :unamused:

48

it seems to me that the content of chen’s speech was more for domestic consumption and that of the international community at large, rather than for mainland china. i think this point has been mentioned earlier in this forum and i agree. chen knows that he has just about zero credibility with the folks in the CCP, and that they trust him about as much as he trusts them. whatever concession he makes to the PRC that is anything short of getting down on his knees and sucking their *#$%s will be labelled as “disingenuous” and summarily rejected. he knows this. his administration knows this. just about everyone in taiwan knows this. and he knows that we know this. so it seems the only reason he would even bother making those “conciliatory” remarks is to attempt to assuage the fears of the moderates in taiwan and the beleaguered state dept of the US. if he was able to do that, then more power to him.

re TSUs criticism of chen over the speech : i just have this feeling that the DPP and the TSU are putting on a huge act for the taiwanese voters - kinda like a “good cop, bad cop” act. TSU is assuming the role of extremist foil for chen to play off of in order to appear more moderate. and the TSU appeals to and captures the votes of the far left. i have always thought that that was the function of the TSU, the reason why this party was first conceived (in addition to acting as a political bulldog to counter the aggressiveness of the PFP). chen would not have anything to fear from the TSU. the TSU would never field its own presidential candidate to run against the DPP (like soong did to the KMT). they know that to do so would mean defeat for the green camp. so regardless of the ostensible criticisms the TSU lobs at him, TSU supporters would obviously never turn and go vote blue. the TSU forms a solid anchor for him at the left end of the political spectrum; it captures for him the deep greens and the most ardent of taidu supporters and funnels their votes towards his alliance. so with those votes secured, chen is then free to manuever along the entirety of the green spectrum, floating over to the most moderate end to net the moderate undecided votes and the light blue votes, thereby extending the voter base for the DPP alliance.

i think it’s pretty clever, and i hope effective. so whatever criticisms the TSU or lee gives re chen’s speech, while i may agree with them, i take them with a grain of salt.

49

[quote=“ac_dropout”]
We already had one (referendum) with the presidential election. Obviously we rejected the whole thing.[/quote]

More than half of the people who voted in the presidential election, voted for the referendum as well, and the mass majority of these votes agreed with the issue.

But we already set a precedent for a referendum, for other upcoming ones. Even Lien himself, advocated for another referendum during the 410 protest, where he had his supporters signing the petition for it.

Ever wonder why these Pan-Blue sponsored protest’s size keep on shrinking? It had gone from half million people on March 27th , to some 50,000 on April 10th, to maybe 15,000 on May 20th, to about 4000 on the arm deal. That’s bad news for the blue team, since not only are they loosing supports quickly, they are also showing the fact of these lack of supports in public. Do they hold these protests just to demoralize themselves?

That’s great, but the question is, can you convince other people to stop voting for the DPP & TSU? These two parties are obviously known for their pro-Taiwan agendas, the public undoubtedly knows that fact, and still voted for them. Even the KMT politicians in the localize camp, are more, or less, taidu oriented. Their supporters knows that fact too.

But these supports for the KMT localized faction will not last forever, and their votes will swing to the other side, if blue-camp political leaders do not change their current pro-China party direction. Simply put, Taidu is the bandwagon where people in Taiwan jumps on, not unification, or pro-unification status quo. So it is quiet pointless for you to pretend to speak for the mass majority, especially not when your political opinions belong to the category of a radical minority.

50

[quote=“carson71”]I just have this feeling that the DPP and the TSU are putting on this huge act for the Taiwanese voters - kinda like a “good cop, bad cop” act.[/quote]Sssh! The plan is working very well so far, no need to let the cats out of the bag :wink:
This strategy is particularly effective since TSU supporters realize full well what chances they have at the ballot box, throwing support behind DPP in elections. Don’t imagine that the low number of TSU legislators reflects the support base. If you go to a DPP rally you’ll be surprised how many TSU banners are to be seen. If PFP were able to put selfish needs aside they would enjoy the same effect, but cooperation isn’t in the orange dictionary.

51

While I agree with these points, I still wonder about the possibilities of a a cross-strait dialog between Chen’s administration and the new Chinese leadership. Logically speaking, if both sides have any interests at all for such a talk to take place, the best time will be between 2005 to 2007, the period after all the elections and leaderships changes are settled, and before the upcoming Constitutional reform and the next Olympic.

The Chinese administration had the luxury to ignore Chen for the last 4 years, because they thought of his election victory as a fluke and placed high hopes for the KMT to regain power soon. But do they still have the same luxury to ignore him for another 4 years at the risk of him pushing through a new Constitution? I doubt so, unless the Chinese placed all their hopes again, but on a different bet this time, on the US government to back Chen down. But that has already proven to be a strategic uncertainty by the fact that the referendum was carried through.

Since the referendum controversy, the Americans had been pretty dissatisfied by Chen’s actions, and been pressuring him to ease the cross-straight tension. Now Chen had made his remarks, to make himself look like a good boy again in the American eyes, the ball is back to China’s court. Chen can now live at ease while the US government place more pressure on China instead. No one wants to see the situation to escalate into an all out war, despite all the showy military exercises. So there must be some real pressure on the Chinese side to solve the problem, without resorting to military conflicts, since that’s not even a credible option. That might force them to adopt a more realistic approach to the situation: one being to buy out the US government, the other being to talk with Chen.

52

What the hell!!! :fume: :fume: :fume:

53

…deleted…

54

I think you have mistated your position. If your statement was true then the referrendum would not have been void. Since it was voided on the technicality that less than 50% of registered voters participated in the referrendum, I beleive the statement you made is false.

As if Taidu supporters ever had a civilized protest of 500,000?

I beleive the 319 special committee was to investigate this aspect of the republic system on Taiwan. ROC suffers from all the same flaws other republics have. Unfortunately, fact checking on political pundits are not that mature in ROC media yet.

Just like Taidu will not succeed, because USA and PRC will diplomatically force ROC to concede to their interest.

CSB speech was geared more for the USA than for the PRC or the ROC. The PRC already officially rejected all suggestions by CSB. And both pan-Green and pan-Blue have attacked CSB speech as being insubstantial to their version ROC interest.

So who is CSB speaking to on 10/10? The people holding ARC on Taiwan?

55

[quote=“ac_dropout”]
I think you have misstated your position. If your statement was true then the referendum would not have been void. Since it was voided on the technicality that less than 50% of registered voters participated in the referendum, I believe the statement you made is false.[/quote]

ac, check your facts.

Chen got 6,471,970 of votes, which is 50.11 percents out of the total 12,914,422 casted votes. More than 7,092,629 people also voted for the 1st referendum question (arm deal), with 6,511,216 of them agreeing to the issue. There were actually more votes casted for the referendum than for Chen himself.

Percentage wise, that means 54.92 percents of all the people who participated in the Presidential Election, also voted for the referendum. Out of all these casted referendum votes, more than 90 percents of them agreed to the issue. That means more than 50.41 percents out of all the casted Presidential votes are for the issue.

Not to mention huge majority of the Pan-Blue voters did not vote for the referendum, not because they disagree, but because they thought the answer to be so obvious that it doesn’t deserved to be asked. And of course they were people who were for the issue, but were simply against the referendum because they think it might help Chen’s chance of winning the Presidential.

So it is beyond me how you could translate the referendum results to: “The vast majority of ROC citizens are against the arm deal, bla bla bla…”, then come back to tell me that I made a false statement.

56

I’m not convinced. I agree that it works that way at the moment - but that is because the TSU has no real power; at the moment they’re all bark and no bite. However, if (as seems likely) the DPP & TSU get a majority in the legislature in December, then things will change.

If the DPP need the TSU to get a majority, then the TSU will be able to push their agenda - and there are some pretty clear differences. I don’t share your confidence that the pan-Greens are one big happy family, all with the same agenda, and I suspect these public disagreements are a sign of things to come. We shall see …

57

i don’t mean to suggest that the two parties are one big happy family. they do indeed have some very real ideological differences. however, they also share very core similarities in ideology as well. what i am saying is that in the present political environment, they share a common rival whose ideological differences far exceed their own differences. i understand what you are saying that once the TSU is able to consolidate enough power for itself, it may seek to push its own agenda and not be as cooperative with the DPP. that may very well be true. i believe that the TSU has enough sense right now to recognize the necessity of maintaining a united front and will not let individual/party ambition, grumblings due to policy disputes, and differences over how aggressive a taidu stance chen should take escalate into a full-blown challenge between the DPP and TSU for the presidency and for legislative seats. i believe the two parties will still coordinate their efforts against the blue camp in the foreseeable future.

they still have to win the major ideological war before they can each stake their own territory in the finer points of the green landscape. and to win the major war, they cannot afford to do what the blue camp is doing right now.

but i agree - we shall see what happens after the green camp takes the majority in the legislature…

58

[quote=“steve101”][quote=“ac_dropout”]
I think you have mistated your position. If your statement was true then the referrendum would not have been void. Since it was voided on the technicality that less than 50% of registered voters participated in the referrendum, I beleive the statement you made is false.[/quote]

Learn how to read, ac, read it over clearly and check it with facts before you make your post.[/quote]
You need to write more clearly instead of using German like syntax. The statement I quoted needs clarifiction on your part not mine. Which sets and sub-sets are you referring to in the Taiwan population.

Please clarify your statement or I will be force to misinterpret at your expense.

59

The local political dynamic still never changed the fact PRC is very consistent in their position.

60

Re-read my last post, then reply. Don’t worry about misinterpreting at whoever’s expenses, you do that so often that we all got used to it.