As many people expected, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) received a heavy sentence — life in jail — after being found guilty in a graft case against him. After receiving the sentence, Chen’s appeal to be released from detention was, like many also expected, unsuccessful, and he remains in detention.
To no one’s surprise, pan-blue media commentators applauded the decisions and continued hurling attacks at the “corrupt family.” While anti-corruption efforts should be acknowledged and supported, it is very hard to understand how “anti-corruption” has taken precedence over the principles of having competent judges, due process and basic human rights, such as a fair defense for the accused and the presumption of innocence.
How can our legal system deal with Chen’s NT$700 million (US$21.7 million) in assets while ignoring those of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), whose value is in the tens of billions of NT dollars?
Taiwan’s situation is very similar to that referred to by Carl Schurz in a speech titled “Liberty and Equal Rights” when he was running in a Massachusetts senatorial campaign in 1859: “Do not indulge in the delusion that in order to make a government fair and liberal, the only thing necessary is to make it elective,” Schurz said, because “the ruling party, which has devoted itself to the service of that despotic interest, shrinks from no violation of good faith, from no adulteration of the constitutional compact, from no encroachment upon natural right, from no treacherous abandonment of fundamental principles.
“When a political party in power, however liberal their principles may be, have once adopted the policy of knocking down their opponents instead of voting them down, there is an end of justice and equal rights,” he said.
This was how the US was back in the 19th century. The KMT and its followers, who have been influenced by some of the darker sides of traditional Chinese culture, seek to accomplish their goals by any means — through unscrupulousness, deceit and false allegations, weeding out those with different opinions while being dishonest. They are as vicious and calculating, if not worse than, the people Schurz referred to.
History has taught us that power needs to be kept in check. The same goes for the judiciary.
Therefore, if we no longer cherish the right to vote and use our votes to execute effective checks on those in power, in the near future Taiwan could very well become a country that is no longer based on democracy, the rule of law and human rights.
Since the Chen case began, we have seen that all kinds of actions that are non-democratic and against the rule of law and human rights can be justified under the guise of “fighting corruption.”
Chen Chun-kai is a professor of history at Fu Jen Catholic University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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