Wu cracks jokes on last trial day
　

‘LIGHT TONE’: Although Wu Shu-jen said she was extremely nervous, she often made jokes that evoked giggles from the prosecutors and others present in the courtroom
　

By Shelley Huang
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Jul 28, 2009, Page 3

Former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) cracked jokes in court yesterday during her last appearance before a verdict is to be announced in September.

Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓) scheduled yesterday’s court date to hear closing arguments from Wu, her lawyers and the prosecution.

She arrived at the Taipei District Court with a doctor and nurse from National Taiwan University Hospital, her caretaker and her son, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中).

When Tsai asked whether she plead guilty or not guilty, Wu inquired whether she could have her lawyers answer.

Tsai instructed her to answer the question herself, and Wu said: “My answer is the same as before.”

When the trial started at the beginning of the year, Wu pleaded guilty to forgery and two of the three counts of money laundering.

She admitted to using fake receipts to gain reimbursements from the presidential “state affairs” fund, but denied embezzling money from the fund and other charges of taking bribes in connection with a land deal and a government construction project.

Wu was initially indicted with three of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) former aides on Nov. 3, 2006, for allegedly siphoning off NT$14.8 million (US$439,000) from the fund.

Yesterday, Tsai asked Wu why her children’s personal expenses, such as National Health Insurance premiums, were paid out of the presidential “state affairs fund.”

Wu said: “I let Chen Chen-hui [陳鎮慧, the former first family’s bookkeeper] take care of all that.”

Wu said she didn’t pay much attention to the books kept by Chen Chen-hui because she trusted her bookkeeper implicitly.

“[Chen Chen-hui] has been with us for a long time, I trust her,” Wu said. “I only look at the bottom line. I don’t pay attention to the detailed expenses.”

When asked about receipts that were used to claim reimbursements from the fund, Wu said she was told by Chen Chen-hui and the former aides that they had to use receipts to claim reimbursements because the rules regarding the fund had changed, and that her only job was to “collect receipts.”

“I told [my children] that if they had any receipts they should give them to me,” she said.

However, after allegations were leveled, “[my children] got scared when they saw receipts. They ripped them up,” she said.

Although Wu said she was so nervous her blood pressure rose, she answered many of Tsai’s questions in a light tone and often made jokes, evoking giggles from prosecutors and others in the courtroom.

She repeatedly said: “Women like to show off what they have bought” when Tsai asked how she knew about personal belongings her friends and relatives purchased, the receipts of which were later used to claim reimbursements.

In related news, Wu’s friend Tsai Ming-che (蔡銘哲) yesterday pleaded guilty during his closing defense.

Prosecutors allege that because Tsai was a close friend of the former first lady, he had easy access to the presidential residence. Prosecutors say Tsai helped the Chen family solicit bribes and lined his pockets with a portion of the money as part of a deal between the government-run Hsinchu Science Park and Dayu Development Corp.

Prosecutors yesterday asked the court to pass a lighter sentence on Tsai because he was a key witness and showed remorse for his crimes.

The court plans to hear closing arguments from the former president today.

Japanese envoy’s remarks still reverberate

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Jul 28, 2009, Page 3
　

Despite an announcement by the National Security Council (NSC) last week that NSC Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起) would soon meet Japanese Representative to Taiwan Masaki Saito, pundits speculated that the political stalemate between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government and the Japanese representative is far from over.

Media outlets have recently reported lingering tension between top-ranking Taiwanese officials and Saito over a comment he made in May, when he said that Taiwan’s status remained undefined since Japan withdrew from the country after World War II.

While some media has interpreted Su’s planned meeting as an “end to a ban” on contact between senior Taiwanese officials and Saito, there was no sign that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) or Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) were interested in meeting Saito.

Saito made the comments while attending an annual meeting of the Republic of China (ROC) International Relations Association at National Chung Cheng University in Chiayi County.

The remarks came days after Ma declared that the 1952 Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Taipei) affirmed the transfer of Taiwan’s sovereignty from Japan to the ROC. Ma’s statement deviated from his previous claim that it was the 1943 Cairo Declaration that gave the ROC claim to Taiwan.

Saito apologized for his remarks after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lodged a protest and demanded an explanation. Saito said it was purely his personal view and that his comment did not reflect the position of the Japanese government.

INTERPRETATIONS

Pro-unification groups have long claimed that the 1943 accord and the Potsdam Declaration of 1945 gave China the right to resume sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu. Independence advocates, however, say the 1943 declaration was little more than a press release and cite the 1952 treaty to argue that Taiwan’s international status remains undefined.

After Beijing complained to Tokyo over Saito’s comments, Ma restated his position when he met a Japanese parliamentarian.

The KMT caucus urged the Executive Yuan to declare Saito persona non grata and asked Tokyo to recall him, while pro-unification groups also condemned him, demanding he leave the country and that Tokyo apologize.

Taiwan independence supporters, on the other hand, said the Japanese government and Saito need not apologize because he “told the truth.”

Chen Yen-hui (陳延輝), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University’s Graduate Institute of Political Science, said the political standoff was far from over. Although Su had agreed to meet Saito, Su’s role as a presidential aide did not carry much weight. However, Chen said he was glad to see both parties make a concession.

Chen said the Ma administration overreacted to the Japanese envoy’s comments, adding that he did not think Saito had any ulterior motive when he made the remark, which was a prominent interpretation of Taiwan’s situation.

As Taipei and Tokyo do not have diplomatic relations, Saito enjoys the freedom to speak his mind because he is technically not a diplomat but a representative of a private organization, Chen said.

Hawang Shiow-duan (黃秀端), a political science professor at Soochow University, said the Ma administration’s reaction violated diplomatic etiquette.

Criticizing the government for acting on an impulse, Hawang said she was nonetheless not surprised at the administration’s reaction because Ma has never been close to Japan.

She agreed with Chen, saying that Saito merely cited an academic theory to express his personal opinion, and that Saito might not have expected his comments would create such a controversy.

Frank Liu (劉正山), an associate professor at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of Political Science, said Su’s meeting with Saito would be a token of goodwill.

FRIENDS OF JAPAN?

As Ma now doubles as KMT chairman, Liu said it would be to his advantage to be friendly with all countries.

Ma is tougher toward Japan than his predecessors were because he believes he no longer needs to form an alliance with Tokyo to counter Beijing, Liu said.

While what Saito said was not new, Liu said he did not believe a seasoned diplomat would express an opinion on a sensitive issue at a non-academic discussion.

If a diplomat did so, Liu said he was either conveying an official message or testing the water.

Liu said he did not think the Ma administration overreacted because it was not surprising to see the KMT bothered by Saito’s remarks

If the KMT was irritated by similar comments made Taiwanese, it was bound to feel more offended if the comment was made by an outsider, he said.

“For a government, the legitimacy of its rule is very important,” he said. “I believe the Ma administration knows very well about Taiwan’s status, but chooses to deny it.”

PRC slams Kadeer’s Japan visit
　

UNDIPLOMATIC COMMENT:: China’s ambassador in Tokyo described the Uighur leader as a ‘criminal,’ while a film about her was a sell-out success at an Australian film festival

REUTERS AND AFP, TOKYO AND MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Tuesday, Jul 28, 2009, Page 5

China’s ambassador to Japan yesterday slammed a planned Tokyo visit by Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

China says Kadeer, a once successful businesswoman in China but now leader of exile group the World Uyghur Congress, planned an outbreak of violence in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region earlier this month in which nearly 200 people died.

She denies the claim.

“How would the people of Japan feel if a violent crime occurs in Japan and its mastermind is invited by a third country?” Japan’s Kyodo news agency quoted ambassador Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) as saying in a group interview.

“The matter can be considered easily when you think from the other person’s viewpoint ... she is a criminal,” he said.

International trips by exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama are routinely criticized by Beijing, particularly when he has been received by prominent figures.

But China has rarely commented on Kadeer’s travels before.

She is scheduled to give a news conference tomorrow and speak at a symposium.

Cui also warned that the visit should not be allowed to damage a working relationship with China which has improved recently, after years of diplomatic spats over wartime history.

“We must prevent important matters that should be worked on together from being disturbed by a criminal or attention to our common interests from being diverted,” Kyodo quoted him as saying.

Meanwhile, the premiere of a documentary about Kadeer that Chinese officials tried to have pulled from Australia’s biggest film festival was a sell-out success, organizers said yesterday.

The Melbourne International Film Festival called in security guards for Sunday night’s premiere of Ten Conditions of Love fearing trouble amid Chinese anger over the film.

Festival director Richard Moore has accused Chinese officials of trying to bully him into pulling the documentary, while Chinese directors have withdrawn their films in protest and hackers have attacked the festival Web site.

Event spokeswoman Louise Heseltine said the Web site remained partially disabled yesterday because of the cyber-attacks, in which hackers replaced information with the Chinese flag and left anti-Kadeer slogans.

But she said the screening at a city center cinema was peaceful and the audience response was positive.

The Australian film-maker behind the documentary, Jeff Daniels, said he was surprised at the strength of the campaign against his film.

“I understood that the Chinese government certainly didn’t want the film to be screened but I never thought people would put that much pressure on the festival,” he told Sky News.

Daniels, who will host Kadeer when the film next screens in Melbourne on Aug. 8, said he was pleased Sunday’s premiere was peaceful.

“I know emotions are running high at the moment. It’s a very dark time for the Uighurs in China and there are a lot of angry people from China on both sides,” he said. “So I’m very happy that it went peacefully, as a documentary should, and people were able to see different sides of the story.”

China’s next target: the film industry

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2009, Page 8

The Government Information Office (GIO) announced on the weekend that starting next month, Taiwan and China would be allowed to cooperate on TV productions. Echoing the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s standard argument for closer cooperation with China at almost every level, Ho Nai-chi (何乃麒), head of the Department of Broadcasting Affairs, said that because TV advertising revenue keeps dropping, Taiwanese TV stations have no choice but to rely on foreign markets — in other words, China.

Amid apprehensions that Chinese talent would elbow out Taiwanese, the GIO said that guidelines were established to ensure that at least 30 percent of personnel in joint productions would be Taiwanese, while the number of Chinese could not exceed one third. Other clauses mandate that the main shooting locations must be in Taiwan and that post-production — editing, special effects and sound effects — must be completed in Taiwan.

Lastly, the promotion of communism and unification, as well as symbols of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will not be allowed, the GIO said.

At first glance, these guidelines would assuage fears that Taiwanese TV productions would be tainted by communist ideology as a result of cooperation with producers across the Taiwan Strait.

But it isn’t so. The problem lies with what the guidelines do not cover: Chinese censorship.

A perfect example of this was provided by the behavior of Chinese filmmakers last week at the Melbourne International Film Festival, which they boycotted because organizers refused to yield to pressure from Beijing not to screen Ten Conditions of Love, a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. Two Chinese directors pulled out of the festival, and the organizer’s Web site was hacked, possibly by Chinese agents.

An order by Chinese regulators in March last year that TV stations across China stop reporting on actress Tang Wei (湯唯) and pull any ads featuring the star because of her role as a Japanese sympathizer in Ang Lee’s (李安) thriller Lust, Caution is also emblematic of Beijing’s ruthless approach to creativity if it defies ideology.

Given the grip the state has on the Chinese TV and film industry, together with the stringent screening and censorship process that precedes the release of entertainment in China, there is no doubt that similar hurdles would be imposed on Taiwanese-Chinese co-productions. One consequence of this would be that Taiwanese production companies seeking to co-­produce a series with Chinese film studios would have no choice but to self-censor by avoiding such inflammatory topics as the occupation of Tibet, criticism of the CCP and Taiwanese independence. This does not mean that Taiwanese producers would no longer be free to express themselves and to address those topics, only that by doing so they would be forsaking any chance of Chinese artistic cooperation and financial assistance.

The risk is that through a process of filtering, Taiwanese productions that refuse to have their artistic integrity muzzled will be unable to make it in the Chinese market, while those that do will reap the financial benefits.

Gradually, Taiwanese production companies that opt to go it alone will be unable to compete with better-financed and ad-friendly Taiwan-China co-productions. Their financial survival will be severely compromised, and with that, Taiwanese voices deemed unacceptable by the CCP will be silenced, unless they find alternative sources of financing in other foreign markets.

As is often the case, what isn’t said matters just as much as what is.

Faulty MRT symbol of dodgy Ma
　

By Allen Houng 洪裕宏
Tuesday, Jul 28, 2009, Page 8

Taiwanese voters really got it wrong when they elected Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), a president who keeps breaking his promises.

Ma’s excuse for his failure to deliver on his “633” policy — 6 percent annual economic growth, US$30,000 per capita income and an unemployment rate lower than 3 percent by 2012 — is that he had not foreseen the global financial meltdown. In a debate during the presidential election campaign, Ma said he would be willing to donate half of his salary to charity if he failed to deliver on the pledge, but now he won’t consider it until 2016.

He used to say he wanted to give the streets back to the public, but now his party is proposing an amendment to the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) that places even stricter limits on public gatherings. He said there could be no unification talks until China reassesses the 1989 Democracy Movement, but now he is pushing for unification as fast as he can.

He also said Taiwan’s future would be decided by the 23 million Taiwanese, although he won’t even allow a referendum on the proposed cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement. Given his propensity for dodging issues and deceiving the public, it should be no surprise that Taipei now has a “dodgy” MRT line.

As Taipei mayor, Ma wanted the city’s Neihu Line to be finished before the end of his term so he could call it one of his political achievements. To this end, he decided to make the Neihu extension a medium-capacity line, disregarding professional assessments, a city council resolution and views raised at public hearings.

The process raised suspicions of corruption, with rumors of city officials accepting benefits from construction companies. Now the Neihu Line is up and running — running into trouble, that is. Ma still proudly asserts that the biggest breakthrough of his term as mayor was the decision to build the long-delayed Neihu extension as a medium-capacity elevated line. Now many people think Ma should bear responsibility for mistakes during his mayoral term.

The government, however, claims city councilors and borough wardens all wanted the line to go into service as early as possible, and that is why a medium-capacity elevated system was chosen. So, the government says, the decision was not Ma’s alone. Ma deceives the public, shifts blame and grabs for power, but takes no responsibility for his actions. How did we end up with a president like this?

Why is it that construction work on the Neihu Line was put up for tender twice, but no Taiwanese firm with MRT construction experience submitted a bid? Why was the contract awarded to Kung Sing Engineering Corporation, which had no such experience? The Canadian firm Bombardier, which won the contract to supply the machinery and electrical equipment, does not have access to patent system technology owned by Matra, the French company that built the original Muzha line.

As a consequence, the Muzha line’s equipment has been junked and its 102 train carriages are sitting unused at the Muzha depot. Can Ma guarantee that these carriages can be converted for use with Bombardier’s system? If they can’t, the carriages, worth NT$4.5 billion (US$137 million), will have to be scrapped. That is much more than what former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is accused of embezzling. Is that none of Ma’s responsibility? If the carriages can’t be converted, that implies the whole decision process was ill conceived. Wouldn’t charges of negligence be justified?

The most valuable qualities in a politician are honesty and reliability. During his year in office, Ma has often deceived the public. He says one thing and does another while devoting all his efforts to power struggles. No wonder people find him insincere.

How can we be expected to trust such a president? There are so many doubts and suspicions surrounding the Neihu Line. If Ma is serious about fighting corruption, he should allow the Special Investigation Division to look into the matter without using his presidential powers to interfere. The public wants to see corruption dealt with and would support the government if it tackled graft seriously.

If Ma wants to win back public trust, he must convince them that the same standard applies across the board in fighting corruption. He should also order an investigation into whether Presidential Office Secretary-General Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) has been involved in any illegal dealings when “fixing” business disputes, and to look into whether Chan’s assertion that this is commonplace in party offices is at odds with Ma’s avowed principle of putting ethics before talent. If the judiciary is only ever seen to take on Ma’s political opponents, the public will not hesitate to call Ma a “dodgy president.”



Allen Houng is a professor in the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang-Ming University.
　

Kaohsiung showed the nation’s true face
　

By Lu I-Ming 呂一銘
Tuesday, Jul 28, 2009, Page 8

The World Games in Kaohsiung brought together 5,000 athletes and coaches from 105 countries. The Games not only introduced the world to the honor and enthusiasm of Taiwanese, but also made Taiwan a focus of worldwide attention.

The success of the Games has narrowed the gap between southern and northern Taiwan and the hosting organizations of the upcoming 21st Summer Deaflympics in Taipei have started to feel pressure to put on a good show after seeing what Kaohsiung accomplished with the World Games.

Such competition between the north and south has not occurred for the past 60 years. As an old resident of Taipei City, I feel that if the Deaflympics only has a Chinese feel without showcasing Taiwan’s unique characteristics, or if it has a stronger Chinese than Taiwanese flavor, the Deaflympics will pale in comparison with the World Games and put the capital to shame.

With substantial coverage by international media — at least of the opening and closing ceremonies — the Games brought international recognition for Taiwan.

Both the New York Times and Forbes magazine praised the main stadium as comparing favorably with the Bird’s Nest, which was built for the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Many foreign media outlets also praised Kaohsiung for the hard work that went into planning the Games, as did Ron Froehlich, president of the International World Games Association.

Froehlich praised the enthusiasm and friendliness of Taiwanese as well as the hard work of more than 7,000 workers, including administrative staff, transport providers, medical care staff and language service providers at 23 event locations who worked to ensure the Games were successful.

Even more worthy of attention is the manner in which the ruling and opposition parties worked together to remove obstacles and make it possible for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to open the Games as head of state.

This not only emphasized Taiwan’s sovereignty, but also gave Taiwan greater international exposure. On seeing the flags of each participating country raised as the athletes entered the field, many ­Kaohsiung residents experienced indescribable excitement and felt that the people of Kaohsiung and the rest of Taiwan were finally part of the international community.

While Taiwan had the home field advantage at the Games, Taiwanese were humble and even held up the team sign and Chinese flag when their official representatives were absent from the opening ceremony and Taiwanese spectators even cheered on the Chinese athletes during competitions.

The various flags on display during the Games showed the openness and diverse nature of Taiwan. At the World Games, the greatest common denominator between the Republic of China (ROC) and the country of Taiwan was “Taiwan.”

Taiwanese who attended the Games showed great tolerance.

Even though some people made their own flags to emphasize Taiwan’s sovereignty, this did not mean that the ROC flag was ignored in fashion.

Everyone gave strong applause when the words “ROC President Ma Ying-jeou” were announced during the opening ceremony.

This shows that ethnic harmony is a natural phenomenon in Taiwan and that the gap between the south and north is being closed.

These are things that politicians cannot interfere with and use to alienate people.

Lu I-ming is the former publisher and president of the Taiwan Shin Sheng Daily News.