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Editorial: Give them their day in court

Persistent speculation about presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) legal troubles -- and possible indictment -- have forced the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to consider how to implement its anti-corruption regulations.

Unlike the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) promise to its candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the DPP has indicated it would not make an exception for Hsieh. However, as pan-green supporters consider the possibility of choosing between suspending Hsieh or playing hypocrite, another question arises: Is indictment an appropriate threshold for suspending party members?

In an effort to one-up each other's anti-corruption credentials, the DPP and the KMT have set a low standard for party suspensions. But as indictments -- and rumors of indictments -- have forced candidates to begin putting their money where their mouths are, they have found ways around the rules.

To accommodate Ma, the KMT eliminated its "black gold exclusion clause," which requires that indicted members be suspended. Despite the DPP's announcement on Monday that it would not do as much for Hsieh, the latter has been hedging his bets by cherry-picking the types of indictment for which he would withdraw from the race.

In their defense, Ma and Hsieh have charged that prosecutors have been leading a political witch hunt against them. Yet without any evidence to support that claim, the problem lies not with the prosecutors as much as with illogical party rules.

The standards for indictment, which were created for political effect, don't make legal sense. An indictment is only an accusation from prosecutors. Candidates who are eliminated from a race before they have a chance to defend themselves in court are deprived of the legal process to which they are entitled. Moreover, this fosters the mistaken impression that accusation equals guilt and that the burden of proof should be on the defendant. This misconception was widely exploited during the protests against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) last year.

The repealing of the black gold exclusion clause has demonstrated how flexible the KMT is willing to be should its anti-corruption policies conflict with party interests. Its later efforts to change Taiwanese law to allow candidates convicted of corruption to run for president provided further proof of this.

Meanwhile, Ma's determination to run for president, even if convicted, shows how little respect he has for the anti-corruption efforts he built his name on.

Ma's supporters, however, have a point: The black gold exclusion clause -- which Ma introduced -- would have prevented him from running before he could defend himself in court. Although all the facts point to Ma's guilt, he is still entitled to a trial.

It would make more sense for the parties to suspend members after a first conviction rather than following an indictment. Allowing party members to run while under indictment would be messy. But this is already a reality and it would be no more untidy than the hodgepodge of exceptions and loopholes used to circumvent the indictment threshold.

While changing the rules in such a way may be politically unwise for the DPP, a Hsieh indictment could force its hand.

In the end, suspending members is just a poor substitute for real anti-corruption reforms. These should begin with dismantling the overly generous immunity package granted to elected officials. If there were guarantees that candidates could be held accountable even after being convicted while in office, there would be less of a need to prematurely weed out indicted candidates.

A logical standard that can be enforced is better than an idealistic rule bent and broken so often as to be meaningless.
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