It was not the first time Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) lied to the public, when he was asked on Friday to confirm whether he has appointed Minister Without Portfolio Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌) to succeed former minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) after Chiu resigned over the most recent cooking oil scandal.
However, it was the first time Jiang was caught lying on the spot.
While Jiang was telling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) at a legislative question-and-answer session that he could not comment on the matter because the consultation process was still ongoing, Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) announced Chiang’s appointment.
Later at the same meeting, Jiang appears to have lied again, when he told Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) that he never said there could be more tainted cooking oil products that remain to be found. That contradicts what he told KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) on Tuesday, when he described the problematic products as “unexploded bombs” — as recorded by the legislature’s video system.
Jiang also lied about Chiu’s resignation two weeks ago.
At 10:40pm on Oct. 3, following Chiu’s 8pm press conference, the Executive Yuan issued a press release saying that Jiang approved of Chiu’s offer to resign at noon that day, while earlier that afternoon, Jiang told DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) that he had not yet made a decision about it.
Since Jiang was appointed premier in February last year, he has built a history of lies.
In July, when Jiang rejected a charge of attempted murder leveled against him over the violent removal of demonstrators from the Executive Yuan complex early on March 24, the premier told prosecutors that he had not ordered the eviction, because he was asleep at the time. That ran counter to his statement at a press conference that morning that he had stayed up until very late that night watching live broadcasts on different TV news channels.
Not to mention his claims that the eviction resulted in more injuries among police officers than among protesters and that the police urged participants to leave by gently tapping on their shoulders, rather than resorting to force.
Many more cases could be added to the list.
When public pressure has forced Jiang to drop his opposition to a number of issues — such as holding a referendum on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) and making the cross-strait service trade agreement subject to a legislative vote on each of its constituent articles, among others — he says that he had never opposed the ideas in the first place and blames what he calls misinterpretation by the media.
The crackdown on protesters at the Executive Yuan ruined the respect that many of Jiang’s students had for him since he was a professor of political philosophy teaching German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt’s work at National Taiwan University. At that time, more than 700 students and alumni said that Jiang’s words and actions since becoming premier showed that he had abandoned the faith that intellectuals of social conscience should keep.
This serves as another example of how Jiang has failed to implement Arendt’s philosophy in politics. Arendt, condemning dishonesty in politics, said: “Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.”
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