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DPP’s Ker Chien-ming sues Ma, Huang
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Democratic Progressive Party
caucus whip Ker Chien-ming presses the accusation bell at the Taipei District
Prosecutors’ Office yesterday, before filing a lawsuit against President Ma
Ying-jeou and Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming.
Photo: David Chang, EPA
The Alliance of Wiretap Victims,
consisting mostly of legislative assistants, yesterday holds a press conference
in Taipei in which it announced plans to file a lawsuit against the Special
Investigation Division.
Photo: CNA
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus
whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) yesterday filed a lawsuit against President Ma Ying-jeou
(馬英九) and Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) over the leaking of secrets
in a wiretapping scandal, saying that the Ma administration’s “governance by
secret agents” has to be stopped.
Accompanied by DPP lawmakers, Ker filed the lawsuits at the Taipei District
Prosecutors’ Office, accusing Ma of instigating the leaking of secrets and
leaking secrets, and Huang of several offenses, including leaking secrets,
defamation, leaking personal information, providing false statements, malicious
persecution and suppression of evidence.
“This is the first lawsuit I have filed in my life, but it is one I have to file
because I want to end the evil of governing by secret agents with this lawsuit
and tell Taiwanese how the Ma administration has resorted to wiretapping and
manipulation of the judiciary to oppress the DPP,” Ker said.
Ker said he filed the lawsuit with the aim of securing evidence — the Special
Investigation Division’s (SID) wiretaps, which were used by Ma and Huang to
accuse the veteran lawmaker of asking Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to
lobby for him in a legal case, as well as records of telephone calls between Ma
and Huang, who he suspects of conspiring against Wang and himself.
Huang’s announcement that Wang and Ker had been involved in misconduct at a
press conference on Sept. 6 kicked up a political storm, in which Ma has been
accused of pursuing a political vendetta against Wang and the DPP, and
infringement of the constitutional mechanism. The SID has been accused of
excessive and illegal wiretapping of the legislature.
Ma and Huang have also been questioned about their meetings and telephone
conversations, which some legal experts say were a violation of the
Constitution.
Citing the example of the Watergate scandal in the US, Ker said former US
president Richard Nixon was forced to resign when a court demanded that Nixon
hand over the wiretaps and that was why securing the evidence would be
important.
“I have never been someone who likes to sue people, but I can only secure the
evidence and directly confront the defendants as a litigant,” Ker said.
While the Bureau of Investigation claimed that it did not begin to tap the DPP
caucus whip’s phone until March 19 last year, Ker insisted that he has been
bugged for more than five years.
Ker said he had not filed the lawsuits to benefit himself, but for the whole
nation as “governance by secret agents should be eliminated and constitutional
order restored.”
Meanwhile, the Alliance of Wiretap Victims, most of its members assistants to
lawmakers, yesterday told a press conference that it had launched a petition and
plans to file a lawsuit against the SID demanding compensation of up to NT$300
million (US$10 million).
By wiretapping the telephone conversations of the entire legislature, the SID
had violated the Communication Security and Surveillance Act (通訊保障及監察法) and the
Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法), the alliance said.
“[The wiretaps] are a disgrace to democracy and a disgrace to Taiwan. Ma,
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and Huang should immediately step down,” said Chiang
Chao-kuo (江肇國), a lawmaker’s assistant.
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