In 2006, the Taipei District Court sentenced former Miaoli County commissioner Ho Chih-hui (何智輝), who also served several terms as a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, to 19 years in jail for corruption, which the Taiwan High Court later reduced to 14 years. In May the High Court found Ho not guilty on appeal, overturning the earlier verdicts. Then, a few days ago, the matter took an altogether unexpected turn when six people, including three judges, were detained on charges of accepting bribes to acquit Ho in the High Court.
In addition to revealing the dark side of the judiciary in Taiwan, this case exposes the rotten nature of the KMT, and particularly President and KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Faced with a wave of public censure, Ma has offered no official response. That task was left to Juan Kang-meng (阮剛猛), director of the KMT’s Central Evaluation and Discipline Committee. Juan’s spin on the affair was that Ho’s KMT membership was annulled in March last year, making the fact that Ma stumped for Ho in previous elections irrelevant. According to Juan, this means the KMT can no longer be held accountable for the Ho affair.
Do Ma and the KMT take the Taiwanese for fools? Ho was a KMT member during almost all his time in office and although he was expelled for violating party discipline when he stood in the election for Miaoli County commissioner without party backing, he was allowed to rejoin after winning the election.
Ho served five terms in the legislature and one as county commissioner, all as a member of the KMT. Ma stumped for him at election rallies as part of a widely accepted political quid pro quo. It is ridiculous for Ma and the KMT to attempt to distance themselves now that Ho has finally been caught out. Perhaps President Ma thinks he can use the case to put on a big show of fighting corruption. Ma should wise up, he cannot escape responsibility for this scandal. Although the authorities are now pulling out all the stops to get to the bottom of the case, their main focus is damage control.
When the case first broke, Ma’s attitude and the KMT’s moves to sever ties with Ho clearly demonstrated that the president and his party have no understanding of political responsibility.
Ho served for a long time as an active KMT member and the party backed him in most of the legislative elections in which he took part, sending its top leaders to stump for him on the campaign trail. While Ho was in public office, he repaid the favor by supporting KMT bills and canvassing for Ma. If the KMT thought it could make this record of mutual back-scratching disappear in and wash its hands of all responsibility just because it canceled Ho’s party membership in March last year, it had better think again.
A lot of people might ask why it is that while Ho was in office he was implicated in a lot of wrongdoing but always found not guilty. There is a saying in Taiwan to the effect that politicians in office can get away with murder, but once they are out of office they run the risk of ending up behind bars. Furthermore, senior party officials have been known to boast openly that the courts belong to the KMT. Most notably, the judiciary can be relied on to change course on any case in which Ma’s name comes up. These things considered, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether Ho’s “innocence” in past cases did not have something to do with behind-the-scenes support from the KMT.
However, after Ho failed to be elected to the current legislature, his usefulness came to an end. With no more backing from his pals, he tried, it is alleged, to get out of trouble by bribing judges. That is how we arrived at today’s situation, with judges and prosecutors under arrest and Ho on the run.
Leaving aside his record in office, if Ho really did bribe judges to sway his appeal, then that constitutes a new crime to be added to the one for which he was originally convicted. He must now be prosecuted and punished in accordance with the law.
What deserves equal attention in this regard are two rather unpleasant characteristics displayed by Ma and the KMT in relation to this case. The first is that when a party member in office is useful to Ma, the two of them can work together, but once that person has outlived his or her usefulness, they are cast aside. KMT legislators who have helped to push through the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China should take heed. They should be under no illusion that serving Ma’s interests now, even suffering a few cuts and bruises for their efforts, does not earn them unconditional support in future.
The second point is that Ma only cares about his own interests. For him, other people are no more than tools to be thrown away after use like disposable chopsticks. This applies not only to KMT politicians but all Taiwanese. Even Taiwan’s sovereignty has become a tool for Ma as he strives to please China. That is why his administration has suppressed people’s right to express their opinion on the ECFA through a referendum. He prefers to rig fake opinion polls purporting to show that the public supports the cross-strait agreement.
While proclaiming that people in Taiwan have the right to decide their own future, Ma has in reality been selling out Taiwan in backroom deals with China. It conforms to his earlier behavior that if China pledges to protect Ma’s interests, then people in Taiwan will just have to look after themselves.
Although many of the politicians Ma has campaigned for have turned out to be corrupt, he has never apologized to the public. This is what you get with a Teflon president who has no sense of responsibility. There is nothing new about that. Ma never apologized when his “6-3-3” campaign promises of 6 percent annual economic growth, annual per capita income of US$30,000 by 2016, and less than 3 percent unemployment turned out to be pure pie-in-the-sky politicking.
Despite this failure, he still has the cheek to ask voters to give him a second term in office in 2012. Ma’s brazenness can be traced back to the way in which he regards other people as tools. He has no concern about public livelihood, job prospects, incomes, or about what kind of a future people can expect. All he thinks about is how to hoodwink, arm-twist or take advantage of people to advance his ultimate goal of unification with China.
In Ma’s eyes, the KMT and its members, and even the Republic of China itself, are no more than tools. To sum up, Ma’s goal is “one China,” and everything and everyone else are just expendable because the end justifies the means.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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