Prominent software developer Cheng Yi-ting (鄭伊廷) earlier this week posted on social media a comment saying that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was a visionary hated by “ignorant people” — including Cheng herself — during his time in office.
Cheng is the founder and owner of RocoDev and previously led a programming team who won the grand prize in the Facebook Developer World Hack 2012, a global competition hosted by the social media giant.
In a Facebook post that on Monday was reposted on Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board, Cheng said that “ignorant people, my former college student-self included,” hated Chen for being “radical” because the former president was “way ahead of his time and dedicated to breaking the inertia of the public.”
Cheng said she previously derided policies that Chen introduced during his presidency, such as introducing Taiwanese history and geography education at primary schools, and passports with the word “Taiwan” on the cover.
It was her previous belief that Chen was “provoking the international community ... destroying the nation’s foundations ... and causing deviant historical perspectives,” the post said.
“After I grew up, I realized I was ignorant. Super ignorant. What Chen did was right, and what the country needed. He saw the future and dared to make policies for it,” she said.
“Most of us only realized 10 years after the fact that he was a badass and made a lot of contributions to society, which is why he was hated by ignorant people,” she wrote.
PTT users overwhelmingly supported the post with comments such as: “Young and ignorant plus [me]” and “without [Chen], unification would have happened about now.”
The former president was sentenced to 20 years in prison on a series of corruption charges that surfaced shortly after his second term in office ended in 2008. He was also fined NT$250 million (US$7.57 million).
He began serving his sentence on Nov. 11, 2010, but he had been detained for nearly two years prior to that.
Chen was granted medical parole in early January.
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