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Updated Saturday, January 17, 2009 9:15 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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Dual nationality issue overblown

Legislator Diane Lee of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), who had been the target of severe criticism by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for her alleged dual nationality, abruptly resigned from the Legislative Yuan on Jan. 9, thus effectively easing off pressure on her both within and without the law-making body. The DPP-sponsored proposal to discuss Lee's dismissal was defeated, and at the same time, Tsai Ting-kuei declared that the scheduled encirclement of the legislature was a failure because not enough people came to participate in the action.

First of all, we must bluntly point out that it was largely due to the poor handling of the controversy by Lee and the KMT that the case was so embarrassing to them for such a long time. As a politician who served as an elected representative at local and national levels for so long, Lee should have been familiar with the current political culture in Taiwan, particularly with regard to the question of dual nationality. In fact, records show that Lee herself once led an interrogation in the Parliament of a high-level DPP official about whether he possessed nationalities of both the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and the United States.

ROC law prohibits public office holders from having dual nationality. She seriously erred in believing that she could successfully shroud her U.S. citizenship and that, once the secret was revealed publicly, she could explain away her behavior without proving she had formally filed a petition with the U.S. government for canceling her U.S. citizenship following her election to the Taipei City Council. She should have found ways to solve her problem a long time ago. Both she and the KMT miscalculated political developments here by not acting quickly and decisively, with the result the two suffered serious damage to their public image during the process.

Having said so much about Lee and the KMT mishandling the dual nationality case, it's time to take an objective and fair look at the issue. The reason it caused such a political uproar was its supposed connection to a person's loyalty to a country. People with dual citizenship could be charged with high treason when they are in a position to have access to top national secrets. But, in Lee's case, the problem may be viewed from a somewhat different angle.

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Comments

January 17, 2009 mtsai16@

Greed plagues most of humanity. Until all of us look at ourselves in the mirror, reflect daily on our past actions and resolve to change for the better, our society will stagnate and be surpassed by other more enlightened societies.