Either independent Legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標) is having a remarkably bad run of luck with his health or he is playing the judiciary for fools.
Yen, sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison in June for illegal possession of firearms, fell ill and checked into hospital complaining of chest pains on July 23 — the morning he was scheduled to report to jail to begin his sentence.
Prosecutors granted him a three-week extension, but instead of reporting to jail on Wednesday, Yen checked back into hospital, this time for surgery, asking for a further five-week delay to the beginning of his sentence.
This time, prosecutors rejected his request, but did nothing to prevent the operation from going ahead even though Yen’s lawyers informed them a full four days beforehand that Yen had scheduled the surgery for Wednesday. Of course his human rights and health should be taken into consideration, but Yen’s succession of ailments do seem to have come at an extremely convenient time.
In this respect, Yen’s case bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), the former unofficial treasurer of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who last month fell ill the day before he was scheduled to start a 22-month prison sentence.
On that occasion, however, prosecutors were unconvinced and forced Liu to undergo tests before transferring him directly from his hospital bed to prison to begin his sentence — just two days after an apparent “heart attack.”
Lo and behold, Liu was photographed entering court just a few days later looking surprisingly fit and healthy, a stark contrast to the pasty-faced figure that was loaded into an ambulance a few days earlier.
Yet for some reason, prosecutors seem reluctant to take similar action in the case of Yen. Does their lack of will to put Yen behind bars have anything to do with his murky gangland background and the fact that he remains an extremely powerful figure in central Taiwan?
There is speculation that Yen is trying to avoid jail in a bid to deal with an upsurge in gang-related violence on his home turf and power base in Taichung County.
But it is also possible that Yen is seeking to prolong the beginning of his sentence until the next legislative session starts, as the Constitution states that no member of the legislature may be arrested or detained without the permission of the legislature while it is in session.
The pan-blue dominated legislature has already done an excellent job of stalling an investigation into whether KMT Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) holds US citizenship, the result of which could see her lose her job, so the KMT would hardly be setting a precedent if it were to help Yen put his prison term on the backburner.
Either way, no one, not even a poor excuse for a lawmaker such as Yen, should be allowed to flout the law in this manner. If politicians continue to demonstrate such little respect for the rule of law and the judiciary, it will be hardly surprising when the public follows suit.
“We cannot continue to grant [Yen’s] requests again and again or it will not be fair to others,” a Taichung prosecutor said.
It’s time for the nation’s law enforcement agencies to put their money where their mouths are.
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