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Selective recall still benefits KMT
By Nathan Novak
Monday, Aug 23, 2010, Page 8
Comedian and actor George Carlin once said, ¡§The public
sucks.¡¨ Perhaps he has a point.
Observing politics over the past four years can sometimes make Carlin¡¦s
sentiment seem understandable. Let¡¦s face it, no one approves of corruption ¡X
unless they benefit from it directly. As Milton Friedman once wrote, we all want
a fair system, but we want a system that is fairer for us than for others.
It seems that in the information age people have become particularly susceptible
to short-term memory syndrome. We are constantly bombarded with information,
some good and some very bad. The minute we take time to analyze arguments that
have been presented can be the minute the argument changes. Sometimes arguments
are turned on their heads before we even finish watching a YouTube video or
reading a news article.
Over the past four years the Taiwanese public, just like the public in other
countries, has fallen prey to this short-memory trap. While it is probably true
that former president Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) and those who worked under him did
engage in graft, money laundering and other forms of corruption and that the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has led the way in denouncing Chen, his family
and members of his administration, some pan-green activists have also been
highly critical and probably rightly so. Even this writer was and remains
disappointed in ¡§the clean party¡¦s¡¨ poor performance regarding corruption during
the final years of Chen¡¦s presidency.
However, here¡¦s the problem ¡X two to four years of corruption ¡X even eight years
of corruption ¡X during the time the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in
power, pale when compared to the endemic corruption that took ¡X and continues to
take ¡X place within the KMT, and I am not referring to KMT corruption only in
Taiwan.
If the KMT takes a long, hard look at its own history, it will find that calling
Chen and his associates ¡§corrupt¡¨ is really quite amusing. ¡§The pot calling the
kettle black¡¨ does not even come close here, because pots and kettles are
roughly the same size. This would be more like the sun calling the moon an
object in outer space or a blue whale calling a single plankton a sea creature.
There¡¦s really no comparison.
What is worse, the extent of the corruption cannot really be known because the
KMT was able to censor all information when in power. The same holds true now,
as the KMT holds power in both the legislature and Executive Yuan. It appears
former presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (Áªø®x) was right to warn about
returning to single-party rule during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Newspapers, individuals, and groups can try their best to expose corruption and
the deliberate trampling of rights, but in reality, with little representation
in the legislature and no voice in the Cabinet, nothing can really be done about
it ¡X at least not at present.
What is worse, the KMT appears to be doing an even worse job of cleaning itself
up while in power than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Even the CCP
occasionally offers up some corrupt officials as sacrificial lambs to sate the
public¡¦s appetite for justice. The KMT? Not one word. Indeed, the cronyism of
the KMT remains the most shocking aspect of its existence.
Ironically, the clearest display of the KMT¡¦s nature was its ability to identify
corrupt actions and officials within the DPP almost immediately. In other words,
KMT officials knew exactly where to look for corruption based on their own
experience of how, where and when to get away with such practices.
I suppose that¡¦s why former criminals are often used to help solve crimes. They
have first-hand knowledge of the criminal mindset and the loopholes and other
weaknesses in the system.
Despite all of this uproar over how corrupt DPP officials were during their
eight years in power, we need to remember why it was the DPP came to power in
the first place. One of the major reasons was because the KMT was then ¡X and
still is today ¡X so corrupt.
We have every right to be disappointed in Chen and his associates, but in being
disappointed, we should also realize that before the DPP came to power,
corruption was the rule, not the exception and there was no safe way for anyone
to voice displeasure. That was a major reason why the KMT ¡§lost¡¨ China and a
contributory factor in their loss of the presidency.
Nathan Novak is a writer, researcher and student of China and
the Asia-Pacific region, with particular focus on cross-strait relations.
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