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No one is safe from
KMT smear campaigns
By Wu Shuh-min 吳樹民
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) served two terms as mayor of Taipei, from 1998 to
2006. In February 2007, he was charged with corruption in relation to a
discretionary fund that he had at his disposal as Taipei mayor.
In response to the charges, Ma wrote: “Taiwan’s democracy has now entered a cold
winter night. Good citizens are at their wits’ end as crooks and ruffians hoot
and howl like owls and wolves in a dark forest. Now that justice has been
usurped by politics, fury has become the last resort for what remains of our
dignity. If we are to stop the wicked from having their way and salvage Taiwan’s
last glimmer of hope, we have no other option than to boldly stand up and say
‘no’ to them.”
Who are the owls and wolves now? To whom should we be boldly saying no?
The storm over Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai
Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) involvement in TaiMed Biologics Co — the Yu Chang case — has
been raging for a few days.
The most unbelievable thing about the Yu Chang controversy is that a government
that is always claiming to uphold democracy and human rights could alter or
fabricate official documents as a means of attacking those whose standpoints and
opinions differ from its own.
In other words, this government is not safeguarding the public’s freedom and
property. On the contrary, Ma’s administration is not averse to using the
machinery of state and the nation’s resources to try and attack those who
threaten its political interests, and it will not stop at using fake official
documents to level false criminal charges against them, vilify their moral
integrity and assassinate their character.
It is the same kind of logic and the same kind of manipulation that ended the
bright young life of air force serviceman Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶), who was
wrongfully executed in 1997 after military investigators framed him for murder.
If even Tsai, as chairperson of the nation’s main opposition party, cannot
escape this pervasive repression and vilification, what is there to keep the
government’s claws off ordinary citizens who have no such status?
We no longer have a democratic government that sees the public as its masters,
but a tyrannical one that has nothing but contempt for the nation’s citizens.
If such a thing were to happen in any Western country, it would be a huge
political scandal, but up to now nobody from Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
has come forward to apologize. On the contrary, they are trying to blame their
own mix-up on the former DPP government.
In today’s Taiwan, if you have produced a document that the government cannot
understand or figure out, the fault is yours, not the government’s.
If you should ever be perceived as a threat to the government’s grip on power,
do not expect the government to feel that it has a duty to help you recover your
good and honest reputation.
You will have to fight back against the government and you will have no one but
yourself to help you do it.
Taiwanese judicial authorities these days work like remote-control toys. They
are at the government’s beck and call to take on the opposition parties for any
flaw they might have, even if the issue has been cooked up by the government.
This government is using our tax dollars to try to brainwash us.
It is not enough for Ma’s government to shut you up; they have to frame you too.
What can you call Ma’s government if not an authoritarian regime that tramples
citizens’ rights underfoot?
Wu Shuh-min is president of the Taiwan Society.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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