Investigations into former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) involvement with Yu Chang Biologics Co, now known as TaiMed Biologics, came at a key moment in the run-up to January’s presidential election, in which Tsai challenged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The affair is often referred to as the Yu Chang case, based on the Chinese name of TaiMed’s earlier incarnation.
On Tuesday morning last week, following more than eight months of “painstaking” work, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s Special Investigation Division (SID) finally issued a public statement about its investigation into the case, announcing that it had found that Tsai had not been involved in any criminal wrongdoing, and that the part of the case involving Tsai was therefore closed.
At the end of last year, then-DPP spokesperson Kang Yu-cheng (康裕成), lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) and others sued then-premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and his wife, then-minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development (經建會) Christina Liu (劉憶如) and then-Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世), accusing them of contravening the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) by trying to prevent a certain candidate from getting elected. They also accused them of forgery.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office has already wound up its investigations into these accusations, starting with an announcement in March this year.
Interestingly, the same legal jargon about “no criminal wrongdoing” was used in the official announcements regarding both cases.
In the approach to January’s election, a great deal of fuss was made about the allegations against Tsai, and the details were gone over in great detail. It is hard to say exactly how much influence the Yu Chang case had over the election result. In the end, both sides in this legal battle have ended up with a conclusion of “no criminal wrongdoing.”
Isn’t it great to see how carefully the investigators in both cases have chosen to apply the law?
Considering the clear evidence concerning Liu’s actions, did the prosecutors really find that there was no criminal wrongdoing on her part?
Or did the officers investigating the allegations intentionally shoot well wide of their targets? And if they did, then why did the SID determine there was no criminal wrongdoing on Tsai’s part?
Did the SID really find that Tsai committed no criminal wrongdoing in the Yu Chang case? Or could it be that, like a queen’s chastity, her innocence is beyond question?
Does their conclusion not imply that Liu really did alter the date on documents she presented to back up the accusations against Tsai, with the intention of sullying Tsai’s name and preventing her from getting elected? If so, how can the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office say that that there was no criminal wrongdoing on Liu’s part?
Evidently, there is some contradiction involved in the way the SID and the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office wound up their respective investigations in relation to the Yu Chang case.
In the run-up to the Jan. 14 election, the accusations relentlessly leveled against Tsai by Liu and others aroused strong suspicions about Tsai’s honesty, putting in question her reputation. Inevitably, this must have had some influence on the way voters cast their ballots.
On the face of it, the SID has cleared Tsai’s reputation. However, the election is long over, and the time limit for Tsai to challenge the election result has also passed. So what, if anything, does Tsai stand to gain from the SID’s belated vindication?
The announcement can only clear her name, but it cannot make up for the damage to her reputation. Such a judicial process can only be described as shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
Smear tactics are all too common in both local and national elections. One candidate starts rumors and vilifies another, while the target of the rumors and vilifications suffers the result of this malicious attack.
Once the election result has been announced, the whole thing usually just fizzles out. If the slandered candidate is not content to see the issue fade away and decides to pursue it in court, they will probably have to wait till kingdom come to get a result.
The manner in which the investigations into the Yu Chang case have wound up is a most worrying example. The judiciary’s equivocal announcements that both accuser and accused are not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing is tantamount to declaring that there is no distinction between vilification and slander on the one hand and lodging accusations and raising suspicions that are backed up with evidence on the other.
Based on this precedent, you can be sure that smear tactics will be even more widely used and copied in elections from now on. It is not a pleasant prospect to think how dark and dirty future elections could get.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors and a retired associate professor of National Hsinchu University of Education.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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