Taiwan's opposition
Hungry for justice
Nov 20th 2008 | TAIPEI
From The Economist print edition
CHEN SHUI-BIAN, Taiwan’s president until May, has long been fond of provocative and flamboyant gestures. His latest is dangerous. The former president, locked up on November 12th on suspicion of serious crimes, at once started a hunger-strike. He languished for five days in a cell isolated from other inmates, until his health failed. Dehydrated and with his blood-sugar levels and blood pressure down to alarming levels, the 57-year-old former president was on November 16th taken to hospital, and given intravenous glucose and saline drips. His health stabilised enough for him to be taken back to prison on November 19th, by when Taiwan’s high court was mulling over his appeal. His lawyer said he would continue his fast.
He is accused of embezzling state assets, accepting bribes, forgery and money-laundering. He insists he is innocent and that his arrest, without a formal indictment, is political persecution. Mr Chen rose to power on a platform of promoting formal independence from China. He accuses the ruling Nationalist party, the Kuomintang or KMT, which took power in May on a platform of warmer ties with China, of jailing him to appease China.
This week there were small protests in his support outside the hospital. Andrew Yang, of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a think-tank, says the low turnout suggests the public is not that sympathetic to Mr Chen. There is no clear evidence against him, but the final years of his presidency were marred by a string of corruption charges involving his family and aides, which ruined the reputation he once held as one of Asia’s cleanest politicians.
One accusation he faces is of embezzling around $450,000 of government funds. He was first accused of this around two years ago by prosecutors he had chosen himself. An international financial-intelligence agency, the Egmont Group, has also voiced suspicions to the Taiwanese authorities about money-laundering, after a sum of money, reportedly $21m, was wired to a Geneva bank account belonging to his daughter-in-law. Such scandals helped lose the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Mr Chen quit in August, this year’s presidential elections.
Several other DPP politicians have in recent months been jailed without formal charges. Prosecutors have argued that they need to be detained so that they do not collude with witnesses. There have been far fewer arrests of KMT politicians and the DPP accuses the judiciary of bias. The current president, Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT, is seen as clean. He has named technocrats to his cabinet for their pristine image. But the KMT itself, which ruled Taiwan from 1949 to 1999, under martial law until 1987, was once notorious for corruption.
Political commentators are divided on the DPP arrests: is it progress that prosecutors dare send a former president to jail? Or does it suggest that the judiciary is politicised, ready to violate the presumption of innocence and tear up the writ of habeas corpus? Whatever the truth, it has put the DPP and its chairwoman, Tsai Ing-wen, in a tricky situation. The party feels bound to protest about judicial bias. But it also needs to distance itself from Mr Chen and the corruption scandals.
A further complication is that one of the other senior DPP figures detained without charge is Su Chih-fen. She was also on hunger-strike until her indictment on November 15th for allegedly taking NT$21m ($621,000) in bribes. But she is also a vote-winner, and despite the charges against her, the party is seeking her re-election in hotly-contested town and county elections next year. Ms Tsai has a tricky course ahead if she is to steer Taiwan’s largest opposition party out of the doldrums.
georgelien修改於2008年11月25日16:08
