It may not rank among the most substantial news stories of the year, but yesterday’s decision by the Kaohsiung District Court to refuse an adoption request by an American couple for a developmentally disabled Taiwanese girl was a stunning example of how Taiwanese justice can resemble a drunken crap shoot.
The would-be parents, whose excellent educational credentials proved to be their downfall, can appeal, but for the rest of us the real question is what caliber of people are being appointed to serve as arbiters of the law.
The court effectively said that the couple, both Harvard graduates and doctorate holders, were at risk of abandoning or otherwise mistreating the child because she was likely to fail to live up to their expectations.
If a court, with such astonishingly disconnected reasoning, alienates people of goodwill who would embrace the disadvantaged, and in so doing condemn a child to a life in institutional “care” instead of a life of caring, what possible confidence can be had in verdicts that turn on genuine legal expertise and that receive tremendous media and political pressure?
Certainly, the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) probing former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has little confidence in the Taiwan District Court, whose decision confirming Chen’s release, pending trial, may go to yet another appeal.
The SIP would appear to be eager to exploit a loophole that allows apparently indefinite appeals based on new evidence or on the details of a separate “case” involving the same suspect. What this means is that the SIP could appeal Chen’s release indefinitely, which, even absent a court verdict, makes a mockery of the spirit of double jeopardy, though we doubt if the prosecutors care.
Meanwhile, the SIP’s colleagues over at the Bureau of Investigation have been hard at work tracking down the profligate and the venal. The latest suspect is Chen Tsung-yi (陳宗逸), news desk head at the defunct New Taiwan Weekly, a pro-independence magazine.
What we cannot understand is how a “corruption investigation” would prompt the bureau’s staff to allegedly probe Chen Tsung-yi’s knowledge of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), a Washington NGO that serves as an advocate for Taiwan, about the North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association or whether Chen had studied overseas.
With these various incidents, the perception that public institutions are prone to incompetence and/or serving partisan interests can only harden. Those with the dreadful, direct experience of harassment by security forces in previous decades will also react to Chen Tsung-yi’s allegations with outrage and fear. This fear — rational or otherwise — can only be compounded by Chen Tsung-yi’s claim that all four of the agents who entered his home were Mainlanders.
The details of the last incident need to be verified, but for now, it appears that Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) is in danger of seeing yet another discrediting incident call both her leadership and the conduct of her investigative staff into question.
Professor Jerome Cohen, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) eminent former teacher, has called for an investigation into Taiwanese judicial practices. Each week seems to bring more compelling and urgent reasons for this to happen.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
Trying to force a partnership between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Intel Corp would be a wildly complex ordeal. Already, the reported request from the Trump administration for TSMC to take a controlling stake in Intel’s US factories is facing valid questions about feasibility from all sides. Washington would likely not support a foreign company operating Intel’s domestic factories, Reuters reported — just look at how that is going over in the steel sector. Meanwhile, many in Taiwan are concerned about the company being forced to transfer its bleeding-edge tech capabilities and give up its strategic advantage. This is especially
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