Chen appears in district court again
　

IN THE BALANCE: Prosecutors said that they opposed the former president’s release because he was still in possession of alleged ill-gotten gains and may try to hide them
　

By Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Dec 30, 2008, Page 1

The Taipei District Court was the scene of intense exchanges yesterday between former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), his attorneys and prosecutors during a hearing to decide whether Chen would be detained ahead of his trial on corruption charges, but no decision had been made at press time.

Chen’s lawyers asked that the three judges not review an earlier decision made by a different panel of judges in the same court.

New Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓) was chosen to replace previous judge Chou Chan-chun (周占春), who had released Chen without bail, in a ballot by judges on Thursday night — a move that pan-green figures said was the result of political pressure.

Tsai asked Chen: “You do not admit to the prosecutors’ charges against you, is that correct?”

Chen said: “No,” adding, “I am innocent of the corruption prosecutors have charged me with, and I can’t accept such humiliation and the destruction of my dignity.”

Chen told Tsai: “You found [President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) not guilty in the misuse of his special allowance during his time as Taipei mayor, therefore I am also innocent and should not have been indicted for misuse of the state affairs fund.”

Prosecutor Chou Shih-yu (周士瑜) then detailed why prosecutors considered it necessary to keep Chen in custody.

“We seized documents from the Ministry of National Defense and National Security Bureau relating to cases against Chen, from his residence, that proved Chen has been working hard to collect information related to his case.

In addition, Chen was able to identify all 25 witnesses in the investigation. Prosecutors warned that the defendant could collude with other suspects and witnesses and hinder their investigation into several other alleged corruption cases involving Chen and his wife Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍),” Chou Shih-yu said.

Prosecutors added they opposed Chen’s release on bail because they had discovered he was still in possession of alleged ill-gotten funds, and if he were allowed to remain free may hide them.

The Taiwan High Court on Sunday ordered the Taipei District Court to reconsider its Dec. 18 decision confirming Chen’s release.

The High Court made the order following an appeal filed by the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP) on Thursday against the Taiwan District Court’s decision confirming his release.

It was the second time the SIP had succeeded in having the Taiwan High Court call for a review of the Taipei District Court’s decision. The first was when the SIP filed an appeal with the High Court on Dec. 17, after which the latter ordered the district court to reconsider the release.

Chen was detained on Nov. 12 and indicted on Dec. 12 on charges of embezzling government funds, money laundering and forgery.

White Terror past ... and present?
　

By Charles Snyder
Tuesday, Dec 30, 2008, Page 8

In my latest trip to Taipei earlier this month, I heard a chilling phrase that I had not heard for many years.

While hearing it was distasteful, it was not unexpected; I have also been hearing it in Washington for the last two months. The phrase is “White Terror.”

For people here, the term raises memories of that dark period in Taiwan’s post-World War II history when occupying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) military forces killed tens of thousands of Taiwanese and persecuted and imprisoned countless more.

People who remember that period began using it again after the KMT government imprisoned — without charge — more than a half dozen Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians and former officials on the eve of Chinese cross-strait negotiator Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit, and then let loose thousands of police on protesters opposing that visit.

For me, it awoke memories of my own time in Taiwan as a student in the Stanford Center at National Taiwan University (NTU) 40 years ago. While my trouble, as a visiting American, was minor compared with the thousands persecuted at the time, it does illustrate some parallels with the present time in the wake of the KMT walk-away electoral victories earlier this year.

I would not bring up the topic save for a frightening and disheartening development that I have heard about in recent years: that the young people of Taiwan do not know about the evils of the White Terror, also known as Martial Law. The school history curricula and the textbooks under a half-century of KMT rule have, I am told, erased the existence of that period for Taiwan’s younger generation.

Now, in the 21st century, the horrors of that period must be resurrected as a staple of schoolhouse education if the country of Taiwan is ever to come to terms with its sordid, late 20th century experiences.

In the 1969-70 year in which I was at NTU, I got used to the mail that came without envelopes, or with sections scissored out by censors. This was why, when I left, I dared not write letters to friends and acquaintances in Taiwan. I knew that my letters might make them targets, and they could lose their jobs, be sent to Green Island in the middle of the night, or worse.

That was probably because I attracted the KMT regime’s attention, having socialized with families of Taiwan independence pioneers, leading an unauthorized anti-war demonstration and later writing stories for Hong Kong’s Far Eastern Economic Review that left KMT leaders reeling.

Those stories led to the most worrisome and egregious incident that occurred after I left Taiwan for Hong Kong.

One day, a Stanford Center student visited me at the Review offices saying that a Stanford teacher had been whisked away in the middle of the night and was feared to have been incarcerated on Green Island without charge.

He was, according to the student, suspected of feeding me the information on which I based my stories. There was no proof, no questions asked, no justice to be had. Just the suspicion and the prospect of the horrors of Green Island imprisonment.

In fact, he had been feeding me information, but only for a story about labor conditions in Taiwan, which ironically I never wrote. An investigator for the dreaded Garrison Command found our names in a guestbook we signed while visiting a textile factory, and arrested him that night.

Through a concerted effort in Taipei and Washington, the students managed to have him released. He became, in effect, a ward of the American students, who alerted their successors every year to find out where he was if he failed to show up at class.

If that is what things were like for Americans and their acquaintances, imagine what it was like for the brave, unprotected Taiwanese who risked their lives and future fighting for freedom and justice against the KMT jackboots.

Taiwan’s youngsters should never be allowed to be brainwashed or denied the right and freedom to know this history in its full dimension.

If recent events in Taiwan prove anything, it is that it is not inconceivable that features of those days could return at any time.

Charles Snyder is the former Washington correspondent for the Taipei Times.

No time to waste for Obama
　

The US president-elect enjoys high support. Timely decisions will keep it that way

AP, WASHINGTON
Tuesday, Dec 30, 2008, Page 9

President-elect Barack Obama will inherit two wars and the worst economic conditions in three generations when he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. Ironically, that challenge might be a blessing for Obama — unemployment is so high and consumer confidence so low that even modest improvements will let him claim progress.

Obama also brings extraordinary assets to the task.

The president-elect enjoys high approval ratings, well-regarded Cabinet appointees and a smooth running transition operation that grew almost seamlessly from his successful campaign team. Fellow Democrats will hold solid House and Senate majorities to help move his agenda through Congress.

But political veterans and presidential scholars say Obama can’t waste time. He must decide which major issues to tackle in his first 100 days in office, the time when his political capital will be at its peak.

His powers and popularity might wane as he looks to end the Iraq War and enact repairs to an economic system that has ravaged jobs, home ownership, retirement accounts and public optimism.

“His goal is to strike a sustainable balance between the politics of sequencing and the politics of urgency,” said William Galston, a domestic policy assistant in former president Bill Clinton’s administration. He said Obama must determine “what are the risks of overreaching versus underreaching.”

So far, Obama has given few hints about which goals might have to wait. Asked recently about tougher regulations on auto emissions and reinstating an offshore drilling ban, for example, he said his advisers would review them “in the weeks to come.”

Earlier this month, he told reporters he had not decided “how we’re going to deal with the rollback of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

Presidential historians say Obama will have to set priorities soon, even if he does it discreetly in the hope of avoiding confrontations with key constituency groups. On overhauling health care, for example, Princeton historian Fred Greenstein said Obama might create study groups and commissions that will push it to the back burner without leaving the impression that it is being ignored.

Greenstein, who has written several books on the presidency, said he gives Obama high marks for running his transition with the same brand of assertive self-confidence he showed during the campaign.

The transition has been characterized, he said, by “a very strong sense of maintaining control and professing to be waiting in the wings but filling up all the presidential space, and doing things in textbook order.”

Obama’s first high-stakes policy choices will involve a costly stimulus plan, which might be ready for his signature within days of taking office. His aides are working with congressional leaders on a package that could spend US$850 billion over two years, much of it on infrastructure, schools and other construction-heavy projects.

He must pick winners and losers from scores of interest groups scrambling for a piece of the stimulus pie. Some want billions of dollars for energy programs, including ethanol pipelines, nuclear power plants and “green” projects that use renewable fuels. Others want mass transit help, cell telephone towers, travel and tourism marketing and countless tax breaks.

“The fiscal stimulus bill gives him a tremendous opportunity to work with Congress quickly to produce a very significant piece of legislation” that helps the economy and “makes a down payment on some policies central to his agenda,” said Thomas Mann, a government scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Meanwhile, Mann said, Obama can also launch discussions of how to revise energy and health care policies “without setting specific dates for completion.”

Issues that cannot wait, however, include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months, although he has left himself some wiggle room. Top military leaders advocate a somewhat slower schedule, and the new president will have to resolve the matter.

Obama wants to increase the US military presence in Afghanistan, which might draw more public attention and controversy if the economic news were not so dominant.

For now, at least, Obama enjoys strong public support. Political insiders say his Cabinet picks are savvy and substantial. A recent AP-GfK poll found that nearly three in four Americans approve of how Obama has handled the transition. That’s about the same level of support his two immediate predecessors enjoyed.

But there is no guarantee that Obama’s actions will reverse the dramatic drops in employment and the stock market, or the crises in the financial and automaking sectors. With billions of taxpayer dollars pouring in, Americans may want results soon, and the new president’s popularity could rapidly diminish if they don’t materialize.

“I find it hard to believe that, no matter how skillful he is, he can sustain this level of hope and support,” Galston said.

“To govern is to choose,” he said, and every time a president chooses, some groups are disappointed.