Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

With less than a year to go before elections, the Ma government is claiming that there are some 36,000 missing documents that are unaccounted for between the Chen turnover of administration in 2008 and the present time 2011. They claim this is not political but their explanations are lame. Picture the following.

Let us say you work for the government or even for a major corporation and you leave your office or position in 2008; now some three years later you are facing accusations, not that you have, but that you may have not adequately accounted for all documents, classified information etc. from 3 years ago. When would the natural time have been to bring this up, three years ago when matters would be fresh in the mind of both you and your staff or three years later?

The Central Election Commission on Tuesday decided to merge the next presidential election and the legislative elections.

Because legislative elections must by law be held before the next legislative session begins on Feb. 1, Tuesday’s decision means the next presidential election, which was supposed to be held in March next year, will take place in January, meaning there will be an unprecedented four-month gap between the presidential election and the swearing in of the president-elect on May 20.