Some people have said the pan-green camp as a whole should take responsibility for the financial irregularities of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his family, while former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) has applied the same logic to the DPP leadership and demanded that they prove their innocence.
However, both the pan-green camp and Chen are on the same side, and both should have been monitored: Who has ever heard of a democratic system that would trust the governing party to monitor itself? It is the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — which should have monitored government spending — that are the real hypocrites and guilty of a cover-up.
Recent history has shown that many pro-independence politicians who have gained access to power have become corrupt. Corruption among pro-independence politicians is not only a moral issue, but also a psychological one.
First, they are essentially stealing from the national treasury of the Republic of China, which does not cause any moral conflict in their minds. In addition, corruption reflects feelings of oppression suffered under the KMT. It represents a way to ease frustration caused from seeing Taiwan’s restricted legal independence. The temptation of corruption is thus understandable.
It must be realized that any corruption among pro-independence politicians was learned from the KMT. During its decades in power, the KMT acted with arrogance and with little regard for the legal system. When former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) came into power, he brought the KMT’s corruption out into the open for all to see. This won the respect and admiration of pro-independence supporters, who helped Lee dismantle the old KMT guard.
The DPP at least attempted to monitor the KMT during its time as the opposition. The KMT, on the other hand, was the majority party during its eight years in opposition. It should probably have been allowed to form the Cabinet, but couldn’t overcome Chen’s legally grounded will, and gave up on the idea.
But even so, it should have fulfilled the role of an opposition party and monitored the government. The party was divided on the issue and eventually did not make any attempt to monitor the government. Some if its members were unwilling to let the DPP know where they stood. Others nurtured hopes of being tapped by the new government and others still worried that they would be accused of wanting to reinstate the “alien regime.”
In the absence of the KMT, individuals took on the monitoring task — some of them former KMT members, some former DPP members. Calls for further oversight were heard, but the KMT, surprisingly, refused to respond.
In response to calls from the public, the party’s chairman said the government should monitor itself in response and that it should not rely on the opposition party.
Internally, the KMT said it did what it did to win back power, and that they would deal with the issue later. In other words, the DPP may have been corrupt, but the KMT, afraid of alienating swing voters, decided to turn a blind eye.
If we want to talk about covering this mess up, we cannot put the blame solely on the DPP and pro-independence politicians alone. They were already suspected of corruption and were psychologically prepared for it.
The main effect of the delayed response in blaming the DPP is intended to divert attention from the KMT’s hypocrisy and complicity in the cover up.
Shih Chih-yu is a political science professor at National Taiwan University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON AND PERRY SVENSSON
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