T.O.S.'s First (sort of) Scoop!

Who knew this blog would get to to fulfill its goals within its first 24 hours of existence? In my first post, I commented on the pro-green under-representation and under-reporting in the English-speaking media. I submit you Exhibit A.

Roughly translated composite headline:

NATIONAL BAR EXAM REQUIRES BRAINWASHING ESSAY

http://news.yam.com/chinatimes/politics/200508/20050829962317.html
http://www.ettoday.com/2005/08/27/301-1836762.htm
http://www.ettoday.com/2005/08/27/10844-1836761.htm
http://www.gov.tw/news/cna/politics/news/200508/20050829960965.html
http://www.ettoday.com/2005/08/27/10844-1836788.htm

A friend of mine sat the bar exam this weekend and was the first to pass this news onto me. When I turned on the TV this morning, I found that the whole country had been talking about this story since Saturday. Yet, I couldn't find a single mention of it in any of the English newspapers or blogs. When my friend sent me the exact headline, I found an AP piece on TaiwanNews.

Now, my Chinese isn't nearly good enough yet to try to translate this stuff. If anyone would like to volunteer their time and post it, I'd greatly appreciate it. What I can piece together from my friends and DimSum is the following:

This year's national bar (lawyer) exam on August 26 had an essay question on it. This question presented an reading that was supposed to be analyzed in an essay. The reading was a political speech by Chen Shui-Bian criticizing the KMT (blue) and PFP (orange) opposition parties. The speech was apparently taken from a speech he gave to the TSU (brown), a DPP-allied party that supports independence and closer ties with Japan, the other foreign oppressors. (The colors help me to keep all these groups straight, you like?)

Now for the best part. The question was, roughly, "Describe the character of a lawyer and the leadership of a president." The Chinese cultural implication here is to compare a good lawyer to a good president. Everyone taking this wants to be a lawyer with good character, and nobody would dare criticize the president of the government that is deciding whether or not to give you the license to practice. Especially since they seem so tolerant of public criticism.

How did this happen? Well, a TSU member sits on the committee that drafted the exam, so the DPP president has nearly complete deniability. A classic Chinese-style political move, or a uniquely Taiwanese strategy that they just came up with?

This stinks to high hell, and shows the DPP's true colors. This is the kind of propaganda that one expects to find on the other side of the South China Sea in the People's Republic of China. We'd find it in Leninist autocratic governments like the USSR, North Korea, or the bad-old KMT. How does forcing an opinion on people help to develop democracy on this island? The DPP isn't any different than the KMT government that it's replaced, and it's supposed drive for change is just a smokescreen for power-grabbing of the oldest kind.