Let's see if I have got this right. Taiwan has just re-elected its president with a voter turnout of more than 80 per cent. The incumbent has been returned with a majority: a tiny one, yet one which nevertheless makes his administration more representative than it was before. This was after an extremely negative campaign against him by the opposition, which ran newspaper adverts comparing him to Hitler. Tensions have been high on the streets of major cities, and in some cases there have been clashes between opposition protesters and police. But so far, this is a political crisis, not a constitutional one.
Yet to hear the commentary that has been reverberating around Hong Kong these past few days, one could be led to believe that the very pillars of Taiwan's fledgling democracy are crumbling. The balloting was suspect. The shooting was staged. It was one giant fraud. It was a terrible example for the rest of China, pundits have claimed. All of this backed up by the kind of speculation that would make John F. Kennedy conspiracy theorists blush.
Sadly, amid the noise, the positive results of the election have been largely forgotten.
First, any country that can get more than four in five of its voters off the couch and into a polling booth should be proud. Hong Kong's turnout rate for the last Legislative Council elections was about half that of Taiwan's.
Then there is the absence of the most common theme of past Taiwan elections: vote-buying. This is a credit to both the self-control of the Kuomintang - still the richest political party in the world - and to the independence of the judiciary, which has been prosecuting alleged cases with Elliott Ness-like zeal.
Sure, leaders on both sides could be showing more statesmanship. Exhorting the KMT's rank and file to take to the streets over flimsy allegations of vote miscounting is not noble of Lien Chan.
He was once vice-president and premier; he knows the importance of social stability. In 1997, when the shoe was on the other foot, he refused to dignify with a response the chants of more than 100,000 people gathered where he stands now. 'Premier step down' they were saying.
