In the wake of former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) conviction, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has offered a predictable counter: the verdict is not legal, but political — an orchestrated campaign by a supposed “party-prosecutor-media-court” alliance.
Huang is an academic with an Bachelor of Laws from National Taiwan University, a Master of Law from Cornell University and a Doctor of Juridical Science from Cornell Law School.
His doctoral research focused on civil procedure and evidentiary standards — the mechanics of how courts weigh evidence, test facts and uphold due process. Huang’s profile is not one of a man ignorant of judicial reasoning, yet his statements suggest otherwise.
Huang dismisses corruption reports as mere “hearsay” unfit for evidence — this is misleading. No competent court treats such reports as conclusive proof of guilt. They serve — as they do in legal systems worldwide — to corroborate documents, establish timelines and buttress witness testimony.
The 450-page judgement against Ko does not rest on a single report, but on a comprehensive body of evidence. Huang knows this.
Huang’s claim that the anti-corruption unit is biased, fares no better. Even if bias was proven, it does not automatically taint the evidence. Courts assess authenticity, consistency and corroboration — not the investigators’ presumed motives. Genuine, consistent documents supported by other proof remain admissible. To argue otherwise is to substitute suspicion for substance.
The alleged leak of the judgement raises legitimate procedural questions, but leaping from what is possibly an irregularity to a grand judicial conspiracy is rhetoric, not reasoning. A leak might demand investigation and accountability; it does not erase the substance of the court’s findings on contraventions in floor area ratios, urban planning laws or Ko’s knowledge and intent.
And that, ultimately, is the pattern.
Rather than grapple with the ruling’s legal merits, Huang attacks the institutions that delivered it. The debate shifts from whether the actions were unlawful to whether the entire system could be trusted. It is a clever political tactic, but it is also corrosive to the rule of law.
Once every inconvenient verdict is branded as political persecution, the law stops being a neutral arbiter. Courts become tools, evidence becomes suspect by origin alone and accountability dissolves into narrative warfare. The line between legitimate oversight and pre-emptive delegitimization vanishes.
Skepticism toward power is healthy, but skepticism without discipline slides into cynicism. Huang offers sweeping conspiracy claims, yet provides little beyond implication and rhetorical questions.
Huang’s academic career championed stronger procedural safeguards, discovery mechanisms, transparency and evidentiary rigor in systems that lacked them. His work was built on the belief that law must rest on tested facts and fair process, not perception or political convenience.
Today, those principles appear to be selectively forgotten when the outcome displeases his party. An academic who once demanded procedural integrity now cries foul whenever oversight proves inconvenient. A politician who rose on promises of accountability now questions the legitimacy of accountability itself.
Huang is free — indeed obligated — to criticize the judgement on its merits: challenge the interpretation of law, the weighing of evidence or the court’s reasoning. However, bypassing making substantive arguments to declare the entire apparatus compromised is to trade the discipline of law for the expediency of politics.
For a legal academic of his caliber, this is a choice. If Huang wishes to continue his political life with any credibility as a defender of justice and the rule of law, he must act less like a partisan operative and more like the judicious academic he was trained to be.
Taiwan’s democracy deserves better than convenient amnesia from those who once promised to bolster it.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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