COMMENTARY
By Earl Bousquet
After the President’s visit, What Next?

The international news reported that outgoing Taiwanese President, Chen Shui-bian, “received a red carpet welcome in St Lucia” at the start of his official visit on Tuesday. A large business delegation was among the 130 individuals who accompanied him on his trip, during which he promised aid and investment. But by the time they left, not much aid had flowed and not one single investment was announced.
The foreign press noted too that “St Lucia was a rare diplomatic coup for Taiwan in recent years.” Indeed, earlier less than a week ahead of the visit, Malawi broke relations with Taiwan, meaning, as the BBC pointed out, “just 23 mostly small nations around the world now recognize Taiwan.”
But just how helpful was the state visit by the Taiwanese leader? How did it help Saint Lucia – the showcased feather in its cap over the past year?
The Governments report that all went well. But the evidence points more to a costly visit, long on promises and short on any form of practical assistance. It seemed more like the government and the entire nation being mobilized to say loud collective thanks to the near departed for help promised in the indeterminable future.
The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) -- which was expected at the end of the official bilateral meeting between President Chen and host Prime Minister Stephenson King – was postponed to (hopefully) take place in Taipei sometime in May 2008, when Prime Minister King will pay a state visit to Taiwan. The government is expected to identify its proposal in the meantime, to be presented later to the next government that succeeds that led by those making the uncertain promises.
But there may also be other more practical reasons why no MOU was signed. It’s absence might have more to do with the unwillingness or inability of the outgoing Taiwan President to tie the hands of the next government that will most likely replace the outgoing ruling DPP after the March 22 Presidential Elections.
All the two leaders agreed upon was that Prime Minister King’s earlier invitation to visit Taiwan still stands. But issues relating to economic aid and assistance had to be left to the incoming next government.
For similar reasons, the outgoing President Chen could not commit his successor to provide the millions of dollars needed to complete the national mental hospital complex begun by the People’s Republic of China. Nor could he have committed the next Taiwan government to fill the budgetary gap created by the loss of the EC $104 million the Chinese had promised, but which fizzled when the PRC suspended diplomatic relations with Saint Lucia.
But if the visit by the Taiwan President was short on practical assistance, it was indeed long on revelations.
President Chen admitted that he’d met the late former Prime Minister Sir John Compton in Saint Vincent in September 2005 – a year ahead of the 2006 General Elections.
This admission reconfirmed the correctness of the then Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) administration’s charge that Sir John had met surreptitiously with the Taiwanese President while the latter was on a state visit to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Sir John had denied that the visit took place, but it was later confirmed by the Vincentian Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves and the Taiwanese Ambassador to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The then Government had argued at the time that by meeting an Opposition political leader and providing support to the major opposition party, the President Chen had been interfering in the internal politics of Saint Lucia. But that too was denied.
There’s recently been more confirmation that Taiwan had been engaging in providing election funding for the ruling United Workers Party (UWP).
Just a few weeks earlier, former UWP Leader, Dr Morella Joseph, public complained that there were still many persons in the leadership of her party who knew that she was “not the one who collected the money” destined for the party from the Taiwanese.

Dr Joseph insisted that she neither collected nor distributed the funds the party received from Taiwan and says it was all part of an effort to smear her name and accuse her of pocketing the party’s money. She lamented that to date none of those who know the truth have come out in her defence.
President Chen’s farewell visit has also made the future uncertain for Ambassador Tom Chou, whose diplomatic style has been roundly criticized by the majority of Saint Lucians ever since he took office about six months ago.
During the President’s brief visit, the Opposition officially called on the Prime Minister to ask President Chen to withdraw Chou from Saint Lucia, accusing him of flouting the island’s financial transparency regulations to make direct monetary donations to ruling party MPs.
But Ambassador Chou remains unrepentant. He has unapologetically aligned and identified with the ruling party and the Embassy has been financing projects in selected constituencies in a manner that is politically discriminatory.
With the changes expected in Taiwan after the March 22 presidential elections, it is widely expected that the KMT party, which favours a less hostile approach to the PRC, may opt for a less confrontational ambassador to represent its interests in Saint Lucia.
But Ambassador Chou is not the only one uncertain about the future. The St. Lucia Government too, has reasons to fear what March will bring in Taiwan.
A lot depends on whether a new KMT administration after March 22 will be willing to honour all the promises made by overseas representatives of a DPP government in its dying days. Nor is it a certainty that a KMT administration will keep President Chen’s invitation and receive the pro-DPP Saint Lucian Prime Minister King with open arms in May.
The Taiwan President distributed US $100,000 each to the island’s leading secondary school for girls, the Catholic church-run St. Joseph’s Convent and the over-100 year old Victoria Hospital, both for structural repairs. But the reputation for Taiwanese largesse established here by Ambassador Chou was noticeably absent during the President’s visit.
The international news agencies reported that Taiwan spent some US $6 million on President Chen’s visit to Guatemala, where he attended the swearing-in of that Central American state’s new President. By comparison, the President’s trip to Saint Lucia may very well end up costing the host government more than the $200,000 the guest President doled out while here.
President Chen left Saint Lucia for New York on Wednesday and returned to Taiwan on Thursday at the end of what may very well have been his final farewell trip in office.
So, what next after the President’s visit? By all accounts, Saint Lucia will have to play a waiting game until after March 22 to find out.
But in the meantime, the island would have much more to gain in the future if the government here takes note of the will of the Taiwanese voters and tailors its attitude to China accordingly.
Change or modification in the government’s position regarding China-Taiwan relations may not be possible if Ambassador Chou is allowed to continue to have his way.
But it all depends on where the government wants to go – whether it wants to continue playing a waiting game with friends on their way out or reach out to new friends with better ideas about their own future.
Whatever the government’s choice, more countries in the world will continue to embrace ‘One China’ instead of recognizing the existence of two.
Current trends in both countries also indicate that China will continue to be favoured over Taiwan as global and domestic circumstances conspire to cause more support on both sides today for cooperation initiatives and cessation of hostilities in pursuit of a growing common desire for peaceful reunification.
The St. Lucia-China Friendship Association (SLCFA) has over the past year stepped back from the fray. But 2008 promises to be a year of resumed activity in pursuit of our position of promoting people-to-people relations between China and Saint Lucia and supporting all initiatives aimed at pursuing and developing similar people-to-people ties between China and Taiwan.
* (Earl Bousquet is President of the Saint Lucia-China Friendship Association (SLCFA) and Vice President of the Latin American and Caribbean Federation of Associations of Friendship in China.)