Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

WikiLeaks says it has Taiwan cables

Taipei Times

The huge cache of confidential US diplomatic cables that is being released by whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks is believed to include large numbers of secret memos exchanged between Taiwanese and US diplomatic officials, perhaps giving the public a firsthand look at the fragile relationship.

WikiLeaks currently holds a set of more than 250,000 documents from between December 1966 and February this year, but has only made 278 available to the public. None of the documents originating from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties, has been released.

Taiwan Post Election Comments

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

The elections are past; the pundits are trying to find an appropriate spin for each side. On the one hand, the status quo remained with the blue party holding three mayor-ships and the green two. But the overall popular vote revealed a large increase for the green camp. The cities of Kaohsiung and Tainan showed a strong increase in DPP suppoort; it resembled a tide rolling northward from the south where the people have a greater sense of what it means to be Taiwanese. It reached Taichung where the people finally seem to realize that you need more than jokes to rule a city and root out corruption.

No such restraint on Lien shooting

Taipei Times Editorial

US academics over the weekend added their voices to the chorus of analyses following Saturday’s five special municipal elections, with highly laudatory remarks on the manner in which the campaigning proceeded.

While their argument that the two camps avoided highly ideological pitfalls and tried to appeal more to grassroots voters was for the most part accurate, the researchers were quoted by Central News Agency as saying that the parties had displayed “restrained reactions” to the shooting of Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), during a campaign rally for a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate for Sinbei City councilor on Friday night.

Who really won the elections?

Taipei Times Editorial

When the dust settled after Saturday’s elections, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) emerged as the winner in Taipei City, Sinbei City and Greater Taichung, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came out on top in Greater Kaohsiung and Greater Tainan. Although, at first glance it appears that very little changed, a closer look reveals that while the KMT may not have lost face, it did lose the real battle by garnering fewer votes than the DPP.

These elections attracted a lot of attention in part because they were widely considered to be a prelude to the 2012 presidential election. Had the KMT lost even one of the three areas it now holds, party morale would have dropped while the DPP’s morale would have soared.

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