To debate or not to debate: that's not a question for Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the Democratic Progressive Party who is running for president. For President Ma Ying-jeou has asked her to debate the question of her charging him with selling out Taiwan, well, to the People's Republic of China.
Ma didn't formally ask for the debate, however. He did so in an interview with Dr. L.Y. Yang, professor of Seton Hall University, and when Tsai was asked in a press conference whether she would pick up the gauntlet, she said the question wasn't an urgent one and they could wait until an eventual TV debate in the run-up to next year's presidential election. Ma must be disappointed, because he has long wanted to make an answer to opposition party leaders' mantra of “leaning toward China and selling Taiwan out.”
We know full well Tsai or anybody else in the Democratic Progressive Party for that matter doesn't want an open debate with the president, who hasn't done and won't do anything of which he has been accused since he assumed office more than three years ago. No one with a sane mind among us or elsewhere in the world believes Ma — or anybody else — could sell Taiwan out to our giant neighbor across the Strait, even if he wanted or wished to. Do you think all of us, the people of Taiwan, would let him do so without a fight? If it comes to fighting, no officers and men in our armed forces will side with him.
Time was when there was someone who could sell Taiwan out to the People's Republic. That someone was President Chiang Kai-shek. He had all the mainland Chinese born soldiers loyal to him. He was a dictator. He could have given up Taiwan to Mao Zedong. And that's that, for the native-born people of Taiwan, who had been bludgeoned into tame submission and were unarmed, couldn't stop him from putting his give-away on the silver platter. But Chiang, who claimed to represent the whole of China, didn't do so for any price.
Yes, quite a number of native-born islanders thought the dictator's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, might sell out Taiwan to Communist China, when he took over reign of our island state from his dying father. For one thing, the younger Chiang was a card-carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party. He still had control of the loyal military and the Taiwanese were unarmed. He didn't, and initiated democratization of Taiwan instead.
But there is a president of our republic who actually sold Taiwan out, not to the People's Republic but to the United States of America. We don't have to tell who he is, because everybody knows Chen Shui-bian, who is now doing time for graft and money-laundering. The give-away wasn't accepted by Uncle Sam, of course.
While still in detention prior to his conviction, former President Chen alleged that a U.S. military government has occupied Taiwan since the end of World War II, and continues to occupy the island even today. He pleaded with the U.S. Military Court of Appeals in Washington to order that military government to instruct President Ma to immediately release him. In a desperate attempt to escape imprisonment, he claimed that during his two terms as president, he was aware of the presence of the military government and carried out its orders. He declared he was in fact an agent of the American military government and the colonial governor of Taiwan for the United States, receiving orders from the chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan while serving as president of the Republic of China for eight years. Roger C. S. Lin, a Chinese American lawyer who filed Chen's appeal with the U.S. military appellate court, helped organize a Taiwan civil government in February 2008 to pave the way for the ex-president's release. The civil government claims the right to rule Taiwan in collaboration with the military government as part of the United States. Cheng Chung-mo, a former vice president of the Judicial Yuan, heads the civil government, which held a world congress in 2010 and opened a Washington office in 2010.
No wonder Tsai doesn't dare debate Ma on the sellout-of-Taiwan question. Unless she is willing to say no to a sellout to China but yes to a sellout to the United States of America.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於100.10.6The China Post 4版 ）
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