The court ruling which ordered Nantou County Commissioner Peng Pai-hsien's (
The prosecution suspects that the 51-year old commissioner of the county worst hit by the devastating 921 earthquake has misappropriated post-quake relief donations and unlawfully manipulated the contracting process for reconstruction projects.
While the truth remains a matter for judicial investigation, to the local communities of Nantou Peng's current troubles are not news and have their origins in his tough personality and governing style, although his supporters and adversaries have different accounts of how these have conspired to cause him trouble.
PHOTO: LU CHANG-PING, TAIPEI TIMES
Withdrawing from the DPP in 1997, Peng -- the three-term legislator who enjoyed a nationwide reputation as a financial and economic professional -- won the election for commissioner as an independent candidate by a tiny margin ahead of KMT and DPP candidates.
After becoming commissioner he soon removed councilors' traditional entitlement to "small construction funds" (
These are a long-standing feature of Taiwan's local politics. To gain support from county councilors, county governments allocate money from their annual budgets to councilors for construction work in their constituencies.
In practice, however, the money often ends up in corrupt councilors' pockets, is used to benefit supporters, or even buy votes. It is, therefore, a much criticized practice.
"Peng is a person with ideals. He has a deep hatred of corruption. His decision to remove unearned profits from some councilors displeased them," said Peng's close aide and secretary, Yang Shun-ming (楊順明).
The County Council Speaker Cheng Wen-tung (鄭文銅), however, disagreed with this assessment.
He said that conflict between the commissioner and the council started when Peng stopped paying salaries to county government officials for several months, in a bid to stress to the central government how financially deprived the county was when he first became commissioner.
"The council disagreed with the drastic measure but he was too persistent with his own ideas," Cheng told the Taipei Times.
He attributed the government-council tension that has existed ever since to Peng's tough and persistent personality. It is for this reason that Peng has been nicknamed "His Majesty" (
The speaker has been a keen political enemy of Peng. The council is apparently divided between the commissioner's faction and the speaker's faction, with the support of 15 and 22 respectively of the total 37 councilors. The factions cut across party lines. Both the commissioner and the speaker have KMT and independent adherents, while all four DPP councilors are considered to be in the KMT speaker's faction.
The "small constructions funds" are just one example of the changes Peng has made to the way public construction projects are contracted. Peng's opponents claim he took total control of almost every project and always awarded the contracts to certain businessmen he favored. His supporters say that is an exaggeration and that integrated planning and contracting were necessary for the sake of efficiency.
Lise Lai (
"There are actually not many companies in Nantou capable of carrying out big, undivided construction projects. Companies which contract for specific parts of construction projects would, of course, complain if there were," she said.
But a county council official, formerly a senior local journalist, said that Peng's big problem is that he sees others as corrupt and only believes in himself and his own small group of aides.
When he became commissioner, Peng brought several previous assistants from the legislature with him to the county government and set up his own "commissioner's office," which was not a part of the institutional machinery of the county.
Many local politicians and county government officials have complained that his eight assistants have too much power over county affairs.
Many of the assistants are ostensibly hired as "temporary employees," filling vacancies at various government departments. But, they have actually worked with Peng at the very center of decision-making, overriding even the heads of government departments.
In addition to relying on personal assistants, allegations of bypassing normal administrative procedure have been made about Peng's use of foundations.
Regarding the ongoing corruption case, the prosecutors have claimed that some NT$30 million of quake relief donations -- which are supposed to be in the government's relief account -- have gone to two private foundations chaired by Peng.
But Peng's camp has a different explanation.
"The New Nantou (
The council had cut the budget of the county government's information department. Peng therefore set up the cable TV channel as the government's official media mouthpiece, using resources from the foundation.
Yang insists the money coming into the foundation had, from the very beginning, nothing to do with quake relief. But prosecutors believe that Peng persuaded some would-be donors to government relief funds into donating money to his foundation instead.
The other foundation in question, the Nantou County Construction and Development Foundation (
According to the rules of the foundation, the incumbent Nantou commissioner must serve as its chairman.
Citing the rules, Yang argued that this was not Peng's foundation and that its funds were nevertheless all spent on post-disaster reconstruction.
But this does not eradicate the possibility that Peng, the incumbent commissioner, could use the money of his own volition.
Councilors have been arguing that Peng used the foundations as a means to avoid supervision by the county council.
"We knew the foundations would cause him trouble," said Tang Huo-sheng (
Although Peng's governance of the county has been highly controversial, his potential for re-election next year has not diminished.
"If he is not convicted, he will still be the most likely winner of the election for commissioner," Tang said. He called Peng a smart politician and the most earnest and hard-working Nantou commissioner ever.
Tang said the three major parties could all field candidates, but Peng was still the most popular politician. This was why, said a council official who declined to be named, Peng was not afraid of falling foul of so many people. "He could win again by catering to less than a mere 30 percent of voters."
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat