taigu "Henry H. Tan-Tenn"

taigu "Henry H. Tan-Tenn" 
If this rather uncritical article is half-accurate, the president of Estonia
is a bit like Lee Teng-hui: old, scholarly, multilingual, reformist,
moderately nationalist, victims of earlier regimes, and a bit eccentric when
compared to Politics-As-Usual. (Lee's in/famous shock phrases, often
expressed in Holo, come to mind.) Lee had to learn Japanese and Mandarin;
Lennart Meri had to learn Russian.

But Meri's break with the past was more complete, perhaps because (1) his
father was an Estonian diplomat when Estonia existed as an entity (the way
Taiwan never has been), (2) he was never entrenched in the Soviet system the
way Lee was in the KMT system, and (3) Estonia does not pretend to be the
Soviet Union in Estonia (SUIE). Whereas Meri developed a reputation for
fighting corruption, Lee may have contributed to it. The Baltic nations all
have sizable numbers of Russian immigrants, and Taiwan has Chinese ones.

"...As Mr. Meri tells it, he showed up at 9 a.m. the day he was appointed
[Foreign Minister], dismissed all the Soviet-era employees and threw out the
only books in the office he inherited: 34 volumes of Lenin...." (The
Taiwanese equivalent: Pres. xx removing ROC flags and Sun Yat-sen portraits
from the Presidential Palace.)

"...It was Mr. Meri who negotiated the departure in 1994 of lingering
Russian troops, meeting with Boris N. Yeltsin over a long, vodka-enhanced
lunch during which, Mr. Meri says, he *blocked the door* to force Mr.
Yeltsin to finish haggling over the closing date for a submarine base...."
(* added)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07ESTO.html?ex=987958525&ei=1&en=21d](<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/07/world/07ESTO.html?ex=987958525&ei=1&en=21d>)
0585495ecdbc8

--Henry Tan-Tenn