You Created This Monster, Taiwan. Now Deal With It.

If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate.

-Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, Act V

On the heels of the KMT's massive electoral victory, a bit of not-so-ancient history from Taiwan's China Post, with a rather startling admission:

With over a two-thirds majority in the new parliament, the [Chinese Nationalist Party] may try to recall President Chen again.  It failed to do so three times in 2006, because it could not muster a two-thirds majority vote.  Chen survived the three recall motions thanks to the solid support of more than one-third of lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan who are DPP lawmakers.

The [Chinese Nationalist Party] has to come up with a better excuse to oust the president, however.  [emphasis added]

Is the China Post now publicly admitting that the KMT resorted to using flimsy excuses in their previous attempts to recall Chen?  Are they really saying that all that huffing and puffing about recalling Chen over the National Unification Council was nothing more than hysterics intended to gin up outrage among KMT true-believers?   That demands for Chen's recall over his attempted cancellation of a nuclear power plant in 2000 was nothing more than political theater?

Well, those days are over, fellas.  Sure is easy to make irresponsible calls for someone's head when you know there's absolutely NO chance of the axe ever falling.  But the KMT's just been handed a two-thirds legislative majority.  A couple seats shy of three-quarters.  And if Chen's golden retriever so much as poops on the sidewalk, the KMT can recall him.  So it really is put up or shut up time.

If the KMT truly believes Chen should have been recalled in 2006 (but was only spared because of overzealous partisanship), they should recall him now.  Better that way.  Why do they need NEW excuses?  Aren't the OLD ones good enough?

Frankly, I'm looking forward to a Chen recall.  Let the Taiwanese understand once and for all the enormity of their decision to grant absolute power to a party that's so blase' about overturning the results of past (and by implication, future) elections.  Let 'em know that their decision yesterday has stripped Taiwan of political checks and balances.  Let 'em know that the price of democracy is responsibility for the men you elect.  And let 'em ruefully reflect on this old piece of cynical wisdom:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

-H.L. Mencken

I imagine Taiwanese will be getting it soon.  Good and hard.

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UPDATE (Jan 15/08):  Looks like there's no recall in the works.  Political theater it was:

"We have no plans to depose the president," [KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou] added, as he noted that it would be counterproductive.

Comments

[Son of Taiwan]

I've never seen people vote away their democracy. This is a sad day for democracy in Taiwan.

[The Foreigner]

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I feel for ya, man. Democracy may be the best safeguard against tyranny there is, but unfortunately, it isn't foolproof.

[Sam]

Makes me wonder will there be a country name change to The Republic of KMT? do you think Mr. Ma will take up smoking cigars and wearing green OD's pehaps grow out a beard?

[Michael Turton]

Can't depose him anyway... the legislature can oust him, but it still needs -- a public referendum to complete the process. LOL. And boy would that set a precedent!

Good to see you back in action, man!

[The Foreigner]

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Michael,

I confess to being overly pessimistic when I wrote this post. What's more, I'm embarrassed to say that I completely forgot about the public referendum part of the procedure, and was only reminded about it a few days ago when I came across a comment by Maddog on A-Gu's blog.

Still, the referendum obstacle shouldn't be a reason for complacency on the part of the DPP. After all, Hsieh's freedom of movement will be severely hampered at every turn by the sniping of the KMT smear machine - assuming Hsieh wins, of course. God forbid, if his approval ratings EVER dip below that magic threshold of 50%, the recall efforts begin in earnest - and then it's 2006 all over again.

So, things aren't quite as bad as I made them out to be a month ago, but...they're still pretty bad. Nevertheless, I AM a bit more optimistic now, and hope to write a post about why that is in the next couple days.