Women-only train cars, Terry Gou (郭台銘) and the death penalty may not appear to have much in common, but recent comments by officials offering facile excuses highlight the quandary facing public policy in Taiwan.
After another alleged sexual assault on a train, the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) said on Friday it would prioritize the first car on 256 commuter trains that depart before 7am and after 9:30pm for women and girls. However, a senior TRA official was quick to say that the first car would not be designated “women only” because the TRA doesn’t want to discriminate against men.
This implies that the TRA wants to be seen as pro-active, while not actually doing anything concrete to remedy the situation. This sounds much like the response to the recent wave of suicides to hit Foxconn Technology’s Shenzhen complex.
While Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn’s parent Hon Hai Precision Industry (鴻海), responded with pay raises, the erection of safety nets and the hiring of mental health counselors, the government responded by voicing concern for Gou. Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said Gou deserved encouragement because he is under a lot of pressure and has done a lot for the economy.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said the government should contact authorities in China to help deal with the situation, adding: “It’s the least the government can do.”
Least being the operative word here. Which brings us to capital punishment.
On Friday, the Ministry of Justice pronounced itself satisfied with a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which found that executing death row prisoners does not violate the two UN covenants Taiwan signed because the defendants are given the opportunity to defend themselves during the trial process.
What the Constitutional Court did not do, however, was actually review any of the 40 death row cases, some of which date back decades and have raised serious questions about the presumption of guilt.
Amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) in 2002 gave Taiwan a modified adversarial system, with defendants in a criminal case gaining new rights to present their side of a case. Many of the death row cases date to before 2002, when judges acted as both prosecutor and judge. Despite the changes that give a defendant the presumption of innocence and require evidence of guilt for a guilty verdict, these requirements are clearly missing in several death row cases.
In addition, defendants facing serious criminal charges are still not entitled to public defenders in hearings before the Supreme Court.
The ability of defense attorneys to review records of the questioning sessions has also been problematic, despite a 1997 regulation stipulating full-length audio-visual recordings be made when prosecutors are questioning the accused. In one prominent death row case, audiotapes of the suspects’ interrogations do exist — complete with the sounds of torture that led to several policemen being convicted of torture and lying to the court. However, those tapes still form the basis of the convictions in the case, despite the lack of any forensic evidence.
Following the Constitutional Court ruling, Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) said there was no timetable for more executions, although such dates would be based on the gravity of the crimes. Once again, he ignored the primary rationale behind the unofficial stay of execution that had been in place for four years: That serious, critical questions about the merit of many of the convictions require that these inmates not be put to death.
In each of the examples cited above, public pressure required the authorities to be seen to do something — and quickly. In each case, the officials glossed over the actual situations that created the problems. This is no way to create public policy.
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