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KMT chicanery worthy of a novel
By Chin Heng-wei 金恆煒
When the student-led protesters ended their occupation of the legislative chamber last month, they left a copy of the late Qing Dynasty novel Exposure of the Official World (官場現形記), a book about the disintegration of the dynasty’s civil service bureaucracy, for Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) on the speaker’s podium.
This book is as telling today as it was then: Indeed, the decay, opaqueness and shamelessness of “enrichment through promotion” may have been surpassed by Taiwanese officialdom in modern times.
The shocking cases of Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), the former Government Information Office staffer who was fired for writing prejudicial essays against Taiwan and Taiwanese and then rehired recently by the Taiwan Provincial Government, and Hsieh Chi-ta (謝啟大), who was allegedly hired by the Taipei City Government recently to help her meet pension requirements, are just two recent cases.
The Control Yuan is investigating Kuo’s case amid questions on how a so-called “high-class Mainlander” like Kuo managed to squeeze out other competitors of equal ability and grab the top job. His and Hsieh’s cases say it all.
Reports about Hsieh’s hiring came out on May 2, but amid the furor over her appointment, she stepped down six days later. Hsieh appears to have taken the moral high ground, but has she? The question remains: Was she fired or did she resign?
The answer is she was clearly fired: She said publicly that her “resignation was approved.” Why? She said that she “will not allow the media or legislators to attack my integrity at will.”
The fact is Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) gave her the loaded gun she used to end it all. After Hau saw a video clip of Hsieh criticizing the Sunflower movement on a Chinese TV station, he called Hsieh and told her that he expected her “to know what to do.” At a press conference the following day, Hau said it was the main reason she “resigned.”
We only have to look at Hsieh’s solemn statements about “having a clear conscience,” “serving the city residents” and having “no plans to retire” to understand that it was all a lie from beginning to end.
Who has attacked her integrity? It is her friends, not the media or legislators. It was her friends who said that her position at the city government was “a reward,” revealed that she had said that her job was “very relaxing” and that she had traveled abroad at least three times during her employment and that they had therefore tried to convince her “not to accept this undeserved pay.” The injustice of Hsieh’s behavior went so far that her own friends could no longer stand by idly and watch.
So was her job a reward? An eight-year-old girl who recently starved to death was a victim of the city’s childcare services that Hsieh was supposed to be supervising.
Instead of taking responsibility, Hsieh said she had been transferred from that job to assist the mayor. However, during an interview the day before, she had stated unambiguously that she was “currently in charge of protection of children from domestic violence.” Moreover, two days before that, the city’s spokesperson Chang Chi-chiang (張其強) said that the main reason Hau had hired Hsieh was that she possessed expertise and experience in social welfare.
Hsieh was working in the public sector, but not only was she not doing what she should have been, she made a critical mistake and unashamedly tried to evade responsibility.
Hsieh has also said that if she chose to start work again as a judge, her pay and pension would have been three times the figure she received from the Taipei City Government. She also said in a political talk show that when she left the legislature 10 years ago, the law would have allowed her to apply to be reinstated as a judge, but the host immediately pointed to the relevant article and destroyed her argument.
In addition, Hsieh has a criminal record, having been convicted and placed on the wanted list. According to Article 6 of the Judges Act (法官法): “No person may be appointed as a judge with any one of the following conditions ... Having been conclusively convicted and sentenced with imprisonment or heavier penalty that impairs the integrity of the judgeship.”
In other words, she can never serve as a judge again, so claiming that she can just makes her look even worse.
Another question is whether she was working as a lawyer at the time she was employed by the city government. To say that she was a voluntary assistant sounds like hot air.
Does that mean that guaranteeing that former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Lo Fu-chu (羅福助) — who was placed on the most wanted list in 2012 after failing to report to prosecutors when he was supposed to begin serving a four-year prison term — would not flee, and then failing to deliver on that promise, would be equivalent to being an accomplice to organized crime? And let us not even ask whether the people working as arbitrators in China hold Chinese citizenship.
Hsieh’s sudden rise and demise is like a chapter taken from Exposure of the Official World.
Chin Heng-wei is a political commentator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
source: Taipei Times
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