James Soong (
That Soong is a liar has never been in doubt. After all, he was the foremost disseminator of the lies and character assassination that was such a feature of KMT rule 20 years ago. Soong would always be ready to airbrush the ugly facts to cover up the KMT's propensity for killing people it didn't like, just as he would use any kind of untruth or deceit against those who were so ungrateful as to think that there could be a better form of government for Taiwan than that provided by a few hundred increasingly geriatric exiles from China and their offspring -- of which Soong himself is one, of course.
Of course Soong is a liar. It is exactly because of his ability to tell whoppers without blanching that he was so useful to his KMT masters before they -- and he -- recast themselves as democrats. Actually, Soong's ability to lie unconscionably is perhaps a small part of a much larger psychopathological problem with Soong, that he is a man who is apparently totally amoral, whose grasp of right and wrong is limited to how claims invoking such value judgments can be used to further the political career of one James Soong, political sociopath.
But Lee's outburst yesterday forces us to ask how Lee could not have known this. But this question is surely rhetorical. Of course he knew it. He worked with Soong at the top of the KMT for 20 years; how could he not have known?
So a question to the president: Since you knew what sort of person Soong was, why did you so eagerly foist him off on a gullible electorate as Taiwan Provincial Governor back in 1994?
Lacking an answer from the president at this time, let us posit one of our own: In 1994 the great schism had not yet happened. Soong appeared to be a faithful follower of Lee, not a rival talking about the "Yeltsin effect" and the size of his mandate, challenging his leader's decision as to the identity of his successor.
So it seems that it is fine to be an amoral lying careerist when you agree with the president but scandalous to be one when you don't -- which is not exactly a guarantee of wholesomeness of character for those who still surround Lee.
But to address Lee's second point -- is Soong a thief? We have heard so many contradictory stories from Soong as to where the massive amounts of money in the bank accounts of his family members came from that Monday night's news conference could only take place against a background of withering skepticism as to his honesty. How many more times are we going to hear "the truth" revised yet again to cover ever larger numbers -- now up to a staggering NT$1 billion.
Even if the details afforded on Monday night are true then we would have a raft of questions to ask, such as what exactly the Weichian Foundation is for -- those that run it do not seem to know what the criteria for handing out US$1.1 million in scholarships were -- who got them, why, what and where did they study and were they friends of the Soong family? -- and whether an election candidate is allowed to spend unused campaign funds in setting up a foundation for his father. The list goes on and on.
But while we deplore Soong's economy with the truth over this matter, let us not forget that the various agencies investigating him are staffed with KMT party men anxious to gain their master's favor.
Do we ever expect a true accounting of Soong's dealings to emerge, free of political bias and distortion? Probably not, to the lasting detriment of Taiwan's political system.
A plague, then, on both their houses.
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