The Presidential Office will not declassify documents concerning former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) controversial “state affairs fund,” but will give the court access to allow the legal proceeding to continue.
Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said that Presidential Office Secretary-General Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) would soon send a letter of consent to court on behalf of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
An official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that with the consent of the Presidential Office, the onus would be on the court to keep the classified documents secret during the proceeding, in accordance with the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) and other decrees regulating secret trials.
With access to the documents, the court will be able to continue the proceeding, the official said, and President Ma would fully respect the judicial inquest into the matter.
”The decision is not a political maneuver,” he said. “Such a description is melodramatic.”
The court proceeding has been suspended since October after the Chen government said that documents pertaining to six diplomatic missions were classified material under the protection of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act and that prosecutors and the court should not be allowed to see them.
Prosecutors and the courts have asked the Presidential Office to declassify the documents in order to continue the trial. Chen’s office has threatened to take legal action if the documents are declassified, arguing that whether the new president has the right to declassify documents listed as confidential by previous presidents is a constitutional issue.
Chen was declared a defendant in the case shortly after his term ended on May 20. Taipei prosecutors indicted his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), in November 2006 on corruption and forgery charges in connection with the mishandling of Chen’s “state affairs fund.” Chen could not be charged at the time because of presidential immunity.
Wu is suspected of using receipts from a number of people to have personal expenses reimbursed from the fund between March 2002 and March 2006. Chen has claimed that the funds were used to conduct six secret diplomatic missions. But the prosecutors said that while two of the diplomatic missions were real, the suspects failed to offer any proof for the remaining four.
The Presidential Office official said yesterday that the decision to allow the court access to the documents sought to establish a constitutional precedent and represented a sign of respect for the judiciary.
This should allow the judiciary to perform its constitutional duty independently, he said.
Chen’s office said it would seek legal advice before making any comment.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift