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Taiwan facing
Sophoclean tragedy
By Jerome Keating
A key theme in Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex is the inescapable legacy of
unresolved past crimes involving the state; and with them came a prophetic
curse. The people of the ancient city of Thebes, caught in the mire of these
past crimes (perhaps because they purposely overlooked them), suffer. As they
struggle to get on with life with its immediate challenges, including the riddle
of the Sphinx, they find that even when it is solved, they still cannot escape
the past. Their former king, Laius, is actually part of it all. He had been
welcomed despite having abused the hospitality of the King of Pelops in the
past. Laius in turn tries to escape a vision predicting his death at the hands
of his son by binding his son’s feet and ordering him to be left for dead. The
son, Oedipus, unwittingly makes his way back to Thebes to fulfill the curse. As
the classic play opens, the citizens have come to Oedipus for the solution to
their woes, but Thebes will not be cleansed until justice is rendered and
retribution for past crimes achieved.
Taiwan finds itself in a comparable situation; it struggles with many external
threats, a hegemonic neighbor, the troubling economy of a modern world, but the
country also remains haunted by its failure to face and resolve its inescapable
past. The widening corruption case surrounding the former Executive Yuan
secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世) highlights how that past, periodically
buried, regularly resurfaces in the corrupt systems endemic within the state.
Lin’s appointment rested on the direct recommendation and support of President
Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Such involvement not only raises questions about Ma’s
judgement, but also his level of responsibility and his legitimacy. How can Ma,
with his own unresolved past, ever be the one to right the wrongs of the nation?
From his early years, when Ma was a suspected student spy and informer for the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), to his ascendancy of a fawning system through
to his claiming ignorance and innocence about how his secretary placed more than
US$500,000 in his bank account, Ma’s life is checkered with question marks.
As the recent corruption case unravels, Lin, as Ma’s appointee, is appearing
more and more to be one of several KMT “go-to” men who were used for corrupt
deals, influence-peddling and appointment-buying. Prosecutors, military generals
and businesspeople have all looked to Lin as someone who could help them. Lin
allegedly boasted that he could assure someone’s chances of success if they
greased his palm with the right amount. In such matters, Lin obviously did not
act alone; he was more a conduit, one of many profiting through these “bribes.”
Though Lin, and then his mother, failed lie detector tests, this was more than a
family affair and the case points to the corruption that has always run deep
within the KMT and the systems that it brought to Taiwan. Perhaps this is why
the prosecutors and Special Investigation Division (SID) appear so reluctant to
pursue the case with the vigor it demands.
To outside observers, Taiwan has the veneer of democracy, but unresolved crimes
and vestiges from its past hang over the country like the crimes in Sophocles’
tragedy on the ancient city of Thebes.
Among such crimes three stand out in particular: First, there are the stolen
state assets; After that comes transitional justice, ie, the fact that
individuals responsible for the imprisonment, torture and deaths which unfolded
under Martial Law and during the one-party state era are still walking the
streets; Finally there is the impoverished judicial system which has never had
its dinosaur judges and prosecutors purged. To this day they continue to abuse
justice. In the face of this, all talk of Ma’s anti-corruption campaign appears
as simple window dressing, a charade designed to beguile a complacent public.
Looking deeper it even suggests that the corruption case against former
president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁)was an orchestrated ruse, a double standard to
distract people from the genuinely corrupt system that remains well entrenched.
If we look at Taiwan’s stolen state assets, this crime has never been resolved
since Martial Law was lifted in 1987 and a multi-party state begun. Ironically,
in 2005, seven years ago, as KMT Chairman Ma pledged that he would rectify this
matter; to date there has been little or no progress despite him being chairman
of the party and president and his party having a majority in the Legislative
Yuan. The money from the properties that the KMT did sell has not been returned
to people; rather it has simply been put back into party coffers. To date, the
KMT remains one of the richest political parties in the world, leaving Taiwan’s
democracy without a level playing field. The KMT has hundreds of millions more
US dollars at its disposal than the combined assets of all the other political
parties. With such a “war chest,” the KMT is able to buy votes, buy elections
and buy misleading advertising to consolidate its power base. By maintaining its
power, it can use people like Lin to keep new money coming in and further
consolidate power.
Then there is transitional justice. Recently, the tracking down of 97 year-old
Hungarian Laszio Csatary, an alleged Nazi-era war criminal, is an example of how
long and how far others have pursued justice for crimes committed during World
War II. In Taiwan, however, true justice has never even come close to being
achieved. How many of those responsible for ruined families, imprisonments,
torture and deaths have ever been brought to trial? Instead, with nearly half a
century of one-party state rule how easy was it for the KMT to purge and wash
away any telltale records of the past? Other than Chen Yi (陳儀), a man executed
more because he had started dealing with the Chinese Communist Party when he was
re-assigned from Taiwan, what KMT leaders have been directly punished?
Who has done time for all of the political imprisonments on Green Island? Why
are the perpetrators and those who knowingly accepted the high profile murders
of the 1980s still walking the streets?
Finally there remains Taiwan’s legal system, one that still operates more as a
tool to punish political opponents and wrist-slap party regulars. While many of
those indicated above have gone free, it was only after years of harassment that
the ultimate court of appeals has finally absolved people like former deputy
foreign minister Michael Kau (高英茂), former National Security Council
secretary-general Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) and former deputy minister of the National
Science Council Shieh Ching-jyh (謝清志) of trumped-up or imagined charges. This
double standard in both the method of pursuit and the examination, point to a
court system that still operates like that of a one-party state rather than one
that serves the people.
In Sophocles’ tragedy, the people of Thebes went to Oedipus expecting him to
free them from the curse which had gripped their state; they did not realize
that he himself was part of its cause. What the Lin case tells the people of
Taiwan is that if they wish to cleanse their country, they must no longer be
satisfied with the veneer of justice and democracy and a few scapegoats. They
must realize how deep the injustice from the past poisons the systems that exist
in the country. Like Oedipus, they must be willing to pursue the truth of the
systems that remain in place, even if bringing down all that have profited from
them would eliminate half or more of the present government.
Jerome Keating is a commentator in Taipei.
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