In a bid to show just how squeaky clean he is — as opposed to the “dirty” former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and, by association, the “corrupt” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) unveiled the latest brainchild of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led government: the Agency Against Corruption (AAC).
This is a rich twist to Taiwanese politics, given that the KMT is one of the most corrupt political parties ever to exist. It is a little bit like the Cosa Nostra in Sicily forming its own bureau to make sure nobody breaks the law.
Ma does not want to give up on a winning strategy. After all, juxtaposing his clean-cut, good-guy image against Chen’s money-grubbing ways was one of the myths that Ma and the KMT created to get into the Presidential Office in 2008.
It is a good thing that the Taiwanese government has a body dedicated to rooting out corruption amongst civil servants, but are the head of the KMT and his subordinates going to be able to restrain themselves from using the AAC to attack their political opponents? If their past three years in power show us anything, the answer is “not likely.”
In all likelihood, the AAC will become the AADPPC, or the Agency Against DPP Corruption, especially in the lead-up to January’s presidential election. Although Ma said at the AAC’s inauguration that adequate evidence proving corruption must be shown before it can bring a case, this is not very hard to do given the murky rules surrounding the use of the special budgets for any elected official and a cultural attitude of cutting corners in Taiwanese government circles — for example, using any old receipt to claim expenses, something even Ma has been implicated in.
In a thinly veiled threat, Ma said that coming under investigation would severely damage the reputation of a civil servant and make his or her spouse afraid to go to work and their children afraid to go to school. This amounts to communal punishment, and it can easily be meted out to those who disagree with the president politically.
Let’s look at what has happened in the lead-up to the presidential election: Just before the end of the DPP’s primary, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Panel (SIP) announced that it was investigating the disappearance of thousands of documents during the former president’s administration, saying that it could possibly indict former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), then in the running for the DPP presidential nomination. Then, just as DPP Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was to unveil her campaign office, the SIP indicted former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) on charges of embezzling state funds and money laundering, conveniently just after Lee said that Ma must be voted out of office.
Just how determined is the Ma government to stamp out corruption? Recent moves regarding the rampant and ongoing practice of vote buying are telling. From December 2008 to May last year, 26 local officials belonging to the KMT were indicted around the nation for vote buying. How did the government reward Hsin Tai-chao (邢泰釗), the chief prosecutor at the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office, who is credited with being Taiwan’s leading prosecutor against the practice of vote buying? He was transferred to Kinmen Island. That shows real determination.
Now, Ma unveils a government body whose entire purpose is to investigate and indict corrupt officials. With his government’s track record, you can expect to see a whole list of officials connected with the DPP indicted on dubious grounds in the next few months.
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS