Without freedom of speech

From The Times:

PRESIDENT Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan…saw his popularity ratings plunge to new lows this week with more than 80 per cent of the island's 22 million residents saying that they had lost confidence in their leader.

Mr Chen has battled to recover his credibility since officials detained his son-in-law on May 25 in the insider-trading scandal.

He faced pressure from the opposition Kuomintang, or Nationalists, and his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). On Wednesday the leader who has made it almost a point of pride to enrage China with his policies to edge the island towards formal independence, announced that Su Tseng-chang, the Prime Minister, would take charge of setting government policy.

David Lee, Mr Chen's spokesman, said: "The scandal is unstoppable. In this society, if there's a scandal about a member of your family it's a shame to the whole family."

Mr Chen, who wields executive powers, will retain the diplomatic and military portfolios and have a say in the issue of ties with China, which claims sovereignty over the island…

The decision by the President to cede many of his powers reduces sharply the likelihood that Taiwan will take decisive action and could even help to take the chill off ties with the mainland that have been effectively frozen since he swept to power six years ago.

Emile Sheng, a political scientist at Soochow University in Taipei, said that the move signalled the effective end of Mr Chen's authority. "Chen Shui-bian is definitely a lame duck. He can no longer enact any substantive policy in the next two years."

That's nice. But more interesting, while the communist press has enjoyed the scandal, I'm sure the Chinese people can read between the lines, as The Taipei Times suggests

Although the scandal involving alleged insider-trading by the president's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘) made headlines on China's state-run CCTV station last week, the legislator who first blew the whistle on the case was last night prohibited from giving a speech on the matter at Peking University.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), who was scheduled to deliver a speech at Peking University last night, informed the press yesterday that the university had cancelled his speech at around 12:30am on Saturday.

"I believe [the reason for the cancellation] was the subject that I wanted to address -- freedom of speech -- which is what made it possible for the recent scandals to come to light," Chiu said...

Chiu said that he attributed his successes in exposing the scandals to the nation's freedom of speech, and wanted to make this the main theme of his speech in China.

"Without freedom of speech, I wouldn't be who I am today and it is unlikely [that the scandals would have been made public], even if there were 10 Chiu Yis," Chiu said.

Chiu said the scandals were a phenomenon of the nation's "crony capitalism" -- a pejorative expression describing a close relationship between government and business -- saying that the same phenomenon was emerging in China.

"I wanted to use the speech to teach the Chinese public how to fight corruption, as corruption is also a serious problem in China," Chiu said.

Chiu said that he was not surprised that the Chinese authorities had prevented him from making the speech at the last moment, as he had feared such a consequence after he revealed the main theme of his speech to the press in Beijing.

"Although A-bian [Chen] might hate me, he wouldn't go so far as to use the power of the state apparatus to suppress my freedom of speech," he said.