As one of the co-signers of several letters by a group of about 30 international academics and writers to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) about the erosion of justice in Taiwan since he took office in May 2008, I was pleased to hear about the Taipei District Court’s verdict on Friday acquitting former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife of money-laundering charges. Finally, I thought, Taiwan’s judicial system is moving in the direction of fairness and impartiality.
However, we were in for a rude awakening when over the weekend the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — from Ma on down — displayed partisanship at its worst when party members lambasted the court’s ruling and urged voters to “vent their displeasure” at the upcoming elections for five special municipalities on Nov. 27.
At a KMT election event in Tainan on Sunday morning, Ma is reported to have stated that while the judiciary must be independent, it must not isolate itself from the outside world or deviate from public expectations.
“The judiciary must protect the interests of the good and the honest. That is the least the system can do,” Ma said.
Ma’s implication was of course that the district court was not living up to public expectations and that it was not protecting “the good and the honest.”
It is indeed interesting to see Ma’s sudden change of heart about the court system: For the past two years, the courts perpetrated one atrocious gaffe after another — both in the case of Chen and others — and appeals for judiciary reform were met with either stony silence or a blase statement that “we will not interfere in the judiciary.” Now Ma and KMT officials are falling over each other to condemn a ruling they don’t like.
Illustrative of the venom with which the KMT is approaching the matter is the fact that KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Tsang-min (林滄敏) and the party’s Greater Kaohsiung mayoral candidate, KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), trotted off to the Control Yuan to ask it to censure the lead judge, Chou Chan-chun (周占春), for “neglect of duties” in the case. In fact, the judge should be highly commended for letting legal arguments prevail over political considerations.
It is also intriguing to note that KMT Secretary--General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) announced that “pushing for judicial reform and fighting corruption” had been added as themes for an upcoming “Walk for Taipei” scheduled for Nov. 21 in support of KMT Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌). The irony is that Hau has been in hot water when it was discovered that a contractor associated with the KMT was paid up to 10 times the market price for work for the Taipei International Flora Expo.
Why do we get the feeling that King’s newfound enthusiasm for judicial reform and his stance against corruption will focus exclusively on the case against the former president and will not touch on the shenanigans of Hau and his city officials?
While this may be expected of party hacks like King and Hau who are trying to play politics with the situation, one would have expected Ma to take a higher road. Isn’t he, as president of the country, expected to rise above local politics?
Yes, Taiwan is in serious need of judicial reform, but appeals in that direction during the past two years — including from Jerome Cohen, Ma’s erstwhile adviser at Harvard — have fallen on deaf ears in the Presidential Office. If Ma is really serious about judicial reform and about fairness and impartiality in the system, he would invite his old mentor to Taiwan and initiate a truly bipartisan effort in that direction.
Gerrit van der Wees is editor of the Washington-based Taiwan Communique.
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