Since he was released on bail, former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has not publicly urged his former secretary Hsu Chih-yu (許芷瑜) to return to Taiwan to clarify details about the corruption scandal he faces. Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has not called for her to return either.
The TPP only shouts about judicial persecution while disregarding the law. As a legislator himself, Huang is leading the TPP’s young supporters to challenge the seriousness of the judiciary.
Former representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who is President William Lai’s (賴清德) senior adviser, recently compared the Taiwanese judicial system with Japan’s, saying it was like comparing apples with oranges. The guilty plea rate among corrupt officials in Japan is rather high, while in Taiwan such officials prefer to lie and destroy evidence.
However, when offenders in Taiwan plead guilty, the rate of conviction is 99.9 percent, the same as Japan’s.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office says it has enough evidence to prove that Ko took money he should not have — although it has yet to find out where the cash went. It says there was likely a quid pro quo to increase the floor area ratio of the Core Pacific City project, which is why Ko has been indicted.
The alleged behavior meets the definition of corruption and acceptance of bribes.
Perhaps Ko’s supporters could check the statements of Shao Hsiu-pei (邵琇珮), the executive secretary of the Taipei Urban Planning Commission, who was forced to break the law after seeing Ko during his time as Taipei mayor bully disobedient civil servants by threatening that they would “never be hired again.”
After reading the indictment, Huang has bullied the judiciary, challenged the rule of law and besmirched the public’s intelligence. He is the most despicable character in this situation.
Chu Meng-hsiang is a former deputy secretary-general of the Lee Teng-hui Foundation.
Translated by Eddy Chang
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS