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EDITORIAL: Politics
trapped in persimmon jam
The pan-blues and the pan-greens have been stuck in a huge argument over how to
help fruit farmers, who find themselves in a difficult situation that will take
more than one election-cycle worth of campaign promises to fix. Nevertheless,
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Tuesday demonstrated his concern by buying about
5,000kg of persimmons at a market using money from the state affairs fund. The
money can be used at a president’s discretion, but the real question is whether
Ma was acting as president, or as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT)
presidential candidate.
While it does seem that those two positions (plus Ma as KMT chairman) are even
more one and the same these days, it is a legally valid question. The two jobs
are not inseparable, whatever the KMT may believe.
It would appear from the press coverage that it was Ma the candidate who was
scooping up the tasty fruit, since he seemed more focused at taking potshots at
his main rival, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文),
than promoting a comprehensive farm policy. If so, shouldn’t Ma have used his
campaign office’s money to buy the fruit, since it didn’t really seem as if he
was acting in his capacity as president? But then he couldn’t do that — since
that might appear to be vote-buying.
Taiwan has grown accustomed to presidents using their special funds any which
way they want, but look at what happened to Ma’s predecessor — or Ma himself
with the Taipei mayor’s discretionary fund. It is time that clear — or clearer —
lines are drawn when it comes to presidential spending, especially while on the
campaign trail. It gives the incumbent an unfair advantage to have a
(apparently) limitless source of discretionary funding. It is one thing to use
these funds for hongbao (red envelopes containing cash) at weddings; it is
another to be buying up bucket loads of fruit to score political points in a
re-election bid.
This is not a persnickety question. It would be a valid question even if Ma had
a resounding lead over Tsai because the nation has been reminded once again this
week of the fickleness of the law when it comes to politicians and discretionary
spending and budgetary responsibilities.
The same day Ma was picking persimmons, the Taiwan High Court upheld the Shilin
District Court’s ruling that former National Palace Museum director Shih
Shou-chien (石守謙) and 14 others were not guilty of corruption in relation to
renovations to the museum’s main exhibition hall. The Shilin District
Prosecutors’ Office had been asking for 15 years in prison for Shih.
The High Court found many mistakes in the prosecution’s indictment, citing a
lack of sufficient evidence to have justified pursuing charges, and more
worryingly, said some of the charges might have violated the law. The
prosecutors can still appeal the verdict — like in a few recent cases involving
officials of the former DPP government — to the Supreme Court, but given the
High Court’s withering ruling, one would hope they wouldn’t.
It is looking more and more like many of the cases that the prosecutors have
been pursuing with such vigor over the past three-and-a-half years are grounded
in politics rather than in law, as many have long suspected. If true, that
harkens back to the dark years of the former KMT administration, when political
vendettas ran as rampant as political paranoia. If it is not true, then it looks
like prosecutors nationwide all need to take refresher courses in evidentiary
review processes.
Any way you look at it, the legal process appears in as dire straits as the
fruit farmers. And while prosecutors are hitting their old textbooks and
brushing up on what they have forgotten, they could be given a few persimmons to
snack on. All that vitamin C should be good for the brain cells, while the
persimmon purchases would help farmers.
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