Soong's tale a noble fantasy of his own

At last, we got a chance to hear, from James Soong (宋楚瑜) himself, his account of the huge amounts of money paid in and out of his son's account. I understand finally why he is called "Soong, the Big Spender (送錢省長)."

According to Soong, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), President of the ROC and the Chairman of the KMT, entrusted him with quite a lot of money to take care of Chiang Chin-Kuo's (蔣經國), descendents.

Listening carefully to what James Soong was telling us, I exclaimed, "What a noble, sentimental account of nonsense!"

It is noble, because neither James Soong nor anyone of his family members ever spent a cent of the entrusted funds, although they were given access to the interest.

It is sentimental, because, as Soong says, not only he, the former Secretary of the KMT, but also President Lee, the Chairman of the KMT, established a fund for the Chang family.

In addition to this, which is public knowledge, there was also an even bigger secret fund established.

It is nonsense, because you can hardly imagine how it could be the case that the fund was held in a private savings account and that the beneficiary had never known about it.

How could we not be moved by such a touching story? But, isn't it all too noble and too sentimental to be true? How could the Chang Family, who is supposed to be the beneficiary of this money, never know of its existence or show their gratitude for the goodwill of the party?

If this was a believable story, the KMT would surely be a noble political party, to have set aside huge sums of money into a secret account to look after the descendents of a party member. If this isn't black gold (黑金), I really don't know what to call it.

This is all part of a smart, slippery, non-partisan mythology which is to become a classic of the new Taiwanese religion of democracy created by James Soong, the "Big Spender."

He who believes, lives forever.

Amen.

Wenjer H. Leuschel is a freelance writer.