taigu "Henry H. Tan-Tenn"

taigu "Henry H. Tan-Tenn" 

Phainn-se, sang m-tioh sou-chai!

--Honggiau



----- Original Message -----
From: Henry H. Tan-Tenn 
To: Taigu (Taiwanese Net) 
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 11:40 PM
Subject: Lennart Meri vs. Lee Teng-hui


> 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
>
>
>