If former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) thought that he would be able to live the quiet life following the end of his second term on Tuesday then the evidence of the last few days would suggest he was sorely mistaken.
Chen’s hope, as he told reporters on Wednesday, that he would live an “ordinary, tranquil and peaceful life” was extremely short-lived. The former president and his legacy have already been buffeted from pillar to post in the short time since he stepped down.
First, just minutes after he had handed over the reins of power to his successor, the Supreme Prosecutors Office declared Chen a defendant in its investigation into the handling of the Presidential Office’s “state affairs fund.”
Chen and all concerned must have known that this moment would come after he lost presidential immunity. Prosecutors indicted his wife on similar charges in November 2006, but it was apparently too much for the prosecutors to allow Chen to leave the Presidential Office with a semblance of dignity.
Later on Tuesday, Prosecutor Wu Wen-chung (吳文忠) of the Special Investigation Panel at the Supreme Prosecutors Office was reported to have joked to reporters that Chen should be given the death sentence, a comment he clumsily denied afterwards.
Chen and his government were also subject to a number of attacks during the opening of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) acerbic inaugural speech.
Then, in another show of how some in the pan-blue camp cling to conspiracy theories, incoming Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) on Wednesday could not help himself when he told a legislative committee that “the wounds to [Chen Shui-bian’s] abdomen were not caused during the [March 19, 2004] shooting.”
Corruption proven to have been committed by Chen Shui-bian in office should be dealt with, but if the judiciary has jokers like Wu anywhere else in the system, then it will be hard to maintain the perception that the former president will receive a fair trial.
That so many people hold Chen Shui-bian in such contempt is hardly surprising, given the way the pro-unification media built him into an object against which they could vent their frustrations. This ritual went into overdrive following his narrow victory in 2004 after the election-eve assassination attempt and reached a frenzy midway through his second term.
The Chinese-language media’s habit of printing hearsay and fabrications and passing them off as fact contributed to the diminishing of the office of president, and this will have repercussions throughout Ma’s rein and probably beyond.
What is most shocking of all is the sight of a prosecutor and a newly anointed defense minister behaving in such an erratic and unprofessional manner.
If the new president considers it acceptable for civil servants and Cabinet ministers to talk in this way, then we can only speculate on what more violent members of the public might do should they happen upon the former president in a civilian context.
The treatment of the former president, however much he is detested by hardline defenders of the “one China” principle, will be a prominent test of Ma’s promise of “social reconciliation.”
For the sake of the former president and the credibility of the government, it is hoped that the members of Chen Shui-bian’s security detail hold higher professional standards than Wu and Chen Chao-min.
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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