(圖片來源：Wikimedia Commons, Information Technology Agreement parties.)
Abraham Lincoln is a great American president.He is respected and admired the world over not just for saving the Union but for his probity as well.A man of probity is a rare animal. You can hardly find one among political leaders across the world nowadays, but someone who is honest enough is the one we now need as our president.
Lincoln was known as Honest Abe when he practiced law in Illinois.In his first campaign for a public office, he tried what he could to sell himself to the voters.But at the end of a campaign speech, Honest Abe told them to elect his opponent who was just as good a candidate as himself, if they chose not to vote for him.
Can Ma Ying-jeou or Frank Hsieh emulate Honest Abe?Or even Lee Teng-hui while he was mayor of Taipei?
Lee visited Atlanta, Ga., which is a sister city of Taipei.Andy Young, a good friend of President Jimmy Carter’s, was the mayor, who called a joint press conference at the City Hall with Lee.An Atlanta Constitution reporter asked Lee what the people of Taipei thought of a series of murders in Georgia.It’s a legitimate question.More than a score of African Americans were killed in the state in just a couple of months and the reporter wanted to know whether the people of Atlanta’s sister city in Taiwan were concerned about the serial murders.“I don’t know,” Lee replied.Everybody at the press meeting was stunned.The mayor of Taipei was honest to a fault.He wasn’t a politician who would glibly offer such standardized platitudes as “The people of Taipei are deeply concerned” or “We hope the murder mystery would be solved as soon as possible.”He did not know because he hadn’t thought about it and didn’t know what the people of Taipei thought of it.He showed the quality of a good national leader.
Taiwan’s presidential campaign of 2008 is a ghastly one.With its standard-bearer lagging far behind in popularity, the Democratic Progressive Party has resorted to smear tactics and character assassination for assailing Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Kuomintang.Ma was indicted for corruption in connection with the “misuse” of his expense account while he was mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006.He was tried and acquitted twice, but his prosecutor has appealed to the Supreme Court which has yet to hand down its final verdict.(Unlike in the United States or the United Kingdom, Taiwan allows prosecutors to appeal when their defendants are acquitted.) Frank Hsieh was investigated by the same prosecutor who dropped corruption charges albeit the presidential hopeful of the ruling party used his expense account while he was mayor of Kaohsiung almost exactly the same way Ma did.That enabled Hsieh to label Ma as Taiwan’s first presidential candidate who is a defendant in the corruption case, though he himself is still under criminal investigation for involvement in a number of scandals.
As the campaign was reaching the home stretch, the ruling party went all out to prove Ma, a mainlander, does not love Taiwan.Born in Hong Kong in 1950, Ma was ludicrously charged with carrying a British passport which was exchanged for an American one.In addition, the Kuomintang candidate was accused – without substantiation – of holding a valid “green card,” a certificate of permanent residence in the United States.His wife was summarily condemned as a newspaper thief while working at the Harvard-Yenching Library in Cambridge, Mass., though she proved her innocence.One of his sisters was reported to have compelled Ma to promise to accredit Chinese universities.Even his deceased father wasn’t spared. A magazine reported the father had an affair with a married woman.The sole aim of the negative campaign is to describe Ma the islander has no love for Taiwan and may flee once things go wrong on the island.
The ruling party called an island-wide rally yesterday to protests against China’s anti-secession law.The legislation, adopted on March 14, 2005, codifies an automatic invasion of Taiwan, if independence were declared in Taipei.Hundreds of thousands of supporters gave each other a high five to symbolize Hsieh’s come-from-behind victory over his Kuomintang rival, a Chinese mainlander born in Hong Kong in 1950. Whatever slogans were chanted in the rally, the only appeal was to vote for anybody but a hated mainlander.
The Kuomintang contributed its share to the ghastly campaign a little earlier.Four lawmakers of the party forced the finance minister to go with them to Hsieh’s campaign headquarters in a First Commercial Bank-owned building in downtown Taipei on Wednesday to find out whether the DPP candidate paid for an extra office on its thirteenth floor.They were trapped in the building by Hsieh’s aides and supporters, who charged them with trespassing.Police help was called for, but the confrontation between police and Hsieh supporters erupted into a melee.A score of people, including policemen, were injured.As a matter of fact, DPP city councilors of Taipei made a similar on-the-spot checkup on the Ma campaign headers on March 4.There was no confrontation, however.
One marked difference stands out in the way Ma and Hsieh treat the outcome of their campaign blunders.The Kuomintang hopeful have always apologized for his faux pas or mistakes, including those committed by his supporters like the four inane lawmakers.Seldom has his DPP opponent.That difference is a sign of honesty, which is the character Middle Taiwan, fed up with increasingly serious government corruption over the past eight years, is looking for in the new leader of the country.
（本文刊載於97.03.17 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
王順民
(
11月22日 15:13
)
劉新圓
(
2007年10月4日 15:04
)
陸以正
