Pro-Taiwan independence groups yesterday expressed their belief in former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) innocence after he was indicted on a charge of embezzling state funds, saying that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was behind the charge. The groups also said the indictment was politically motivated.
Justice has to be served in the indictment of Lee, scores of pro-Taiwan independence groups said at a joint press conference held in Taipei.
Lee was indicted on Thursday on charges of embezzling NT$7.8 million (US$271,000) in national security funds during his tenure in office from 1988 to 2000. The following day, Ma held an impromptu press conference denying accusations that the indictment of Lee was politically motivated.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Unconvinced, Taiwan Association of University Professors (TAUP) president Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲) yesterday said it was hard to believe that Ma was not involved in the case.
Chang said that since Ma took office in 2008, opposition politicians, including former Chiayi County commissioner Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) and Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬), have been falsely prosecuted.
Lee’s support of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and his proposed campaign of “voting against Ma to protect Taiwan” were the reasons why Ma decided to go after the former president, Chang said.
Examining the development of the case chronologically, “you will realize that this is a calculated maneuver,” he said.
“Lee was indicted by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Panel on June 30. Ma held a press conference the next day and said the case was by no means an act of political oppression. On July 2, Ma announced at the party congress of his Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] that the main theme of his re-election campaign will be ‘fighting corruption,’” Chang said.
Lo Fu-chen (羅福全), Taiwan’s former representative to Japan, said Ma’s recent comments on the case suggested that Taiwan’s judicial system did not function independently.
“As the president, the top official of the administrative branch, Ma should not ‘instruct’ what should be done on any judicial case. If he does so, it’s an infringement of the judicial system,” Lo said.
Central Taiwan Society (台灣中社) secretary-general Lee Chuan-hsin (李川信) said the indictment did not make sense because “it was not necessary for Lee to steal money from the state fund for his own business because he doubled as KMT chairman at the time, and the KMT is one of the richest -parties in the world.”
“Lee could have gotten the money from his own party [if he wanted to steal money], which would have been easier,” Lee Chuan-hsin said.
Tsai on Friday called the timing of the former president’s indictment “suspicious,” adding that judicial cases “should not be used as tools to serve political interests or for election purposes.”
Coming to Ma’s defense, Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏), a spokeswoman for the president’s campaign office, yesterday accused Tsai of -criticizing the judiciary through a political lens.
Lee Chia-fei said that when KMT members were indicted, the DPP did not accuse the courts of being selective in their rulings, and accuse Tsai of favoring a partisan judiciary in which “people from the pan-blue camp can be indicted and people from the pan-green camp cannot.”
Additional reporting by Staff Writer
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS