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Editorials
Tuesday, February 1, 2000Candidate retreats on
Taiwan independenceINDEPENDENCE has been the chief goal of Taiwan's main opposition party. But this position is anathema to the Communist leadership in Beijing, which has long refused to rule out the possibility of using force to unite Taiwan with mainland China.The issue: The presidential candidate of Taiwan's main opposition party has backed away from advocating independence.
With elections approaching next month, the Democratic Progressive Party's presidential candidate has backed off significantly on the independence issue. The candidate, Chen Shui-bian, said the party would not declare independence if it won the elections.
Apparently trying to avoid scaring voters, Chen said Taiwan was already a sovereign state and that there was no need to declare the island independent. Chen also said he did not advocate writing into the constitution the so-called "two-states theory" of President Lee Teng-hui, who enraged Beijing by saying Taiwan would henceforth deal with the mainland as an equal.
Chen is a former mayor of Taipei. In the past he openly advocated independence for Taiwan. With Kuomintang supporters divided between two candidates, Chen has a real chance of election. He is now shading his position in hopes of becoming more acceptable to the main-stream voter.
The change may also have been intended to reassure Beijing, but the initial reaction from the Communists was skeptical. Chinese analysts said the Communist leadership is so suspicious of Chen that words alone make little difference. Beijing's ambassador to Washington, Li Zhaoxing, has said any of Taiwan's five presidential candidates is acceptable except Chen.
Liu Hong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a Beijing government think tank, said a victory by Chen would be China's worst-case scenario. "If this man comes to power, it will be a kind of provocation, a challenge to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China," he said.
Chen is running a close second in Taiwan opinion polls to James Soong, who many analysts believe is China's preferred candidate. Soong has been ousted from the ruling Nationalist Party for launching a maverick presidential bid to challenge the party's standard-bearer, Lien Chan. Soong has taken an accommodating position on China. He has vowed to end a five-decades-old ban on direct trade, transport and mail links between Taiwan and China.
There is no doubt that most people on Taiwan don't want to be reunited with mainland China under present conditions and prefer to maintain Taiwan's de facto independent status. However, an overt declaration of independence could run the risk of provoking war. That is why the Kuomintang Party has avoided such a declaration, although President Lee's statement on equal status came dangerously close.
China's threats and statements by Taiwan's leaders are part of a propaganda war that may never result in violence. But no one can be sure.
By disclaiming an intention to declare independence, Chen Shui-bian may have improved his prospect of victory. Yet Beijing's frosty reaction indicates that his success could further heighten tensions with mainland China. The question is whether Beijing would do anything about it.
Death penalty error
A college journalism class raised eyebrows last year by proving that a prison inmate who spent 15 years in prison facing the death penalty for his murder conviction was innocent. Unfortunately, the miscarriage of justice that resulted in Anthony Porter's death sentence is not an isolated case. Illinois Gov. George Ryan has placed a moratorium on executions because more death sentences in Illinois have been overturned than carried out. The review that Ryan ordered should be extended nationwide.
Ryan has appointed a special panel to study Illinois' capital punishment system, focusing on why the convictions of 13 death-row inmates have been overturned since that state's death penalty was reinstated in 1977 -- one more than the number of inmates executed. Nebraska's legislature approved a similar moratorium last year, but it was vetoed by the governor.
Imposing the death sentence on innocent people is not unusual. A 1982 study published by the Stanford Law Review documented 350 capital convictions since 1900 in which the convict later was found not to have committed the crime. Twenty-three of those convicts were executed. A 1996 update of that study found that four more individuals were executed before strong evidence of their innocence surfaced, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after a 1972 decision rejecting existing death penalty laws. The ACLU reported two years ago that since then 77 persons had been released from death row after being found not guilty of the crimes for which they had been condemned. For every six prisoners executed during that period, one innocent person was condemned to die and later exonerated, according to Amnesty International.
"There's a problem in this system and it needs to be studied and we need to have some answers before we put any innocent people to death," Ryan said. He said he wants to make sure "there is a way that all of these questions can be answered and that the person who goes to death is absolutely guilty."
That may be impossible because of the potential for error in the jury system. The question is whether any more inmates should be put to death because of that reality.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
