Ever since the world saw former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) handcuffed on Nov. 12 before he was whisked away to a detention center, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has made such a mess of the case against him that regardless of the final ruling (pre-trial hearings opened yesterday), doubt will remain as to whether Chen received the rights that are usually conferred upon defendants in a democratic system.
As a result of numerous leaks to the media, open personal grudges by KMT officials, judicial gerrymandering and unsavory “skits,” what could have been a case backed by solid evidence has turned into what law professor Jerome Cohen, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) former mentor at Harvard University, last week compared to a “circus.” Given this, with the possible exception of die-hard pan-blue Chen bashers, the majority of us will find it difficult to accept a “guilty” verdict — a foregone conclusion, judging by the wind — without skepticism.
As a result, a benchmark in the nation’s history will be clouded by lingering questions about impartiality, political vengeance and government meddling in the judiciary — developments that hardly resonate with democratic nation-building.
The announcement last week by the Taipei District Court that Chen’s hearings would not be broadcast — unless the presiding judge decides otherwise, which is highly unlikely — can only undermine the judiciary’s legitimacy in the eyes of Taiwanese, or at least raise even more questions. While Article 90 of the Organic Act of Court Organization (法院組織法) does give courts the right to legally prevent broadcasts, given the stature of the accused and the implications for the future of the nation, an exception could have been made.
Of course, anyone who witnessed Chen’s performance as a lawyer in the 1980s defending such luminaries as future Democratic Progressive Party chairman and leader of the Kaohsiung Incident Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) would be aware that allowing Chen to appear on TV screens in every household during the hearings would spell great trouble for prosecutors — and by rebound the KMT. But given the circumstances and all the questions that have surrounded the case since Chen was taken into custody, allowing the public to view the proceedings, rather than the censored leaks we are likely to be served by the authorities, would have been the proper thing to do. In fact, if prosecutors were so certain, as they seem, of the air-tightness of their charges against the former president, they would not hesitate to make the process fully transparent.
After more than a month of blunders and reversals highlighted by criticism both at home and abroad about the questionable lack of impartiality and independence of the judiciary, prosecutors had a chance to set things straight by allowing some light into the process. Rather, they chose to keep everything in the dark, a decision that is certain to fuel further speculation that Chen may indeed have been a political sacrificial lamb rather than a man in high office who abused his powers to steal from public coffers.
As a result of the mishandled case and the circus-like atmosphere, prosecutors have put themselves into an uncomfortable corner. Having reached a point where only transparence could dispel suspicions (which would mean giving Chen air time), they elected to go the authoritarian way, where court rulings are made in secret, away from public scrutiny.
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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