The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office Friday questioned People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
During a press conference after he was questioned, Soong on the one hand passed the buck to former president Lee Teng-hui (
In other words, Soong's latest explanation of the case was the same old tune that he has been playing for the past three years, although it was perhaps a bit more dramatic this time. But the world still hasn't gotten any clear answers.
Today, Soong is a vice presidential candidate, nominated by the KMT and the PFP. It is necessary for him to clarify his role in the case, instead of repeatedly telling us how deeply his family members have suffered from the accusations against him. We can understand the pain of the Soong family over the past few years, but if Soong quickly clears up all doubts about the case, maybe the suffering of his family members can end sooner.
People have been wondering why a donation of NT$100 million from Chen You-hao (
Furthermore, when the scandal first broke, James Soong said that none of his family members owned any property in Hawaii. It was then discovered that his son owned five houses in the US, and that he already owned these houses when he was a student at the University of California at Berkeley. In response to questions from the media, Allen Soong said the money was a gift from his parents, while his wife later said that Allen Soong had earned the money himself. Why all the discrepancies and contradictions?
Third, why didn't James Soong return to the KMT the NT$240 million that was in his bank account when he discontinued his KMT membership in July 1999? Why did he wait until prosecutors requested that the Ministry of Finance turn over materials from an audit of his accounts on December 26 that year?
Only days later did Soong hurriedly deposit the money with the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office, where the money remains to this day. What are his reasons for such behavior, which is clearly a matter of criminal misappropriation?
Frankly speaking, the burden to prove whether Lee authorized Soong to set up accounts for the KMT secretary-general at the Bank of Taipei and Chung Hsing Bills Finance should rest with Soong. Lee has already unambiguously told prosecutors that he never issued such an authorization to Soong.
If Lee has his facts mixed up, the KMT, which today fully supports Soong, should be able to produce from its archives concrete evidence in support of Soong.
The issue that concerns voters is the question of Soong's ethics and integrity, not that the KMT has withdrawn its accusations against Soong or that the court has decided not to prosecute. The best thing Soong could do would be to start from the beginning and provide explanations for every issue that the public wants clarified.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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