Speaking of...

Speaking of Asian politics, Taiwan's first lady indicted on corruption charges.

My Taiwanese friend, YMC, called the Taiwanese governmental corruption scandal to my attention a couple of months ago now. Indeed, I would direct you to his blog for an interesting Taiwanese perspective on the issue.

But the situation seems to have come to a new breaking point with the most recent round of indictments. Taiwan is prone to political protests, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the square outside of the CKS Memorial packed with people in the following weeks calling for Chen Shui-Bian (the current President) to resign.

It’s a scene that we’ve seen several times across SE Asia of late. In the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has faced corruption charges of her own (though they had to do with vote rigging, not fiscal matters), and as such has faced five different coup attempts within the last year. In Thailand, Thaksin, who has facing corruption charges of a fiscal nature, was overthrown by a military coup in September.

But for Taiwan, the stakes are bigger. If their government loses its power of rule, the whole sovereignty of the “nation” is called into question. How would Beijing react to a destabilized Taiwanese government? Would they see it as the opportunity they’ve been waiting for? Beijing would love to see the Nationalist party (which is a strong believer in reunification with the mainland) come back into power in Taiwan, and they might just wait for that eventuality and try to influence things in that direction. Or they might be more overt.

In any case, the ruling DPP seems to have lost whatever credibility they still had in Taiwan, and that is a sad state of affairs.

I watch with baited breath.