Tired of the Double Standard of Justice Under the KMT? Wait There is More.
Tuesday June 08, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.
The Double Standard of Justice and Prosecution that harkens back to the days of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Martial Law era has returned to Taiwan with the administration of Ma Ying-jeou. Yes, we know that Ma keeps chanting the mantra that he is anti-corruption and the gullible western media sources continue to lap it up. Unfortunately they have always been too lazy to do their homework and measure Ma's words against his actions and/or his directives to his underlings. If nothing else those western media sources should remember the likes of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew who notoriously campaigned for re-election under a platform of law and order. The law and order Nixon and Agnew did not fare well in their encounters with the courts.
Nevertheless let us continue; first there is little need to go over the many past violations. For those with short memories; I simply refer them to my postings of April 30, May 7, and May 9th. Scroll back a little and one will see enough of the details. Here I will go on to continued developments. On May 13, the prosecutors made an announcement; they were considering charging the aides of KMT Speaker of the Legislative Yuan, Wang Jin-pyng with forgery and/or falsifying the documentation for expenses of his special allowance fund. Though this is a similar fund that Chen Shui-bian and not his aides has spent two years in jail for allegedly falsifying, the prosecutors were "considering" charging Wang's aides and not Wang himself.
Of the US$600,000 involved, Wang has been given a Proceed to Go without Going to Jail Card because he allegedly did not pocket any of this money. Say what? If the documents that demonstrate on what the money was spent are false, how do we know that the money was spent at all? How do we know the money was not pocketed? If "fraudulent receipts" were used to claim reimbursements, the mystery remains where the money did go, and how it is justified. When the same claim was made against several members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), they were all indicted. But here the courts are only considering indicting not Wang, but only his aides. Believable? It gets worse.
No sooner was Wang given his get out of jail free card than he turned around and urged the prosecutors to give a lighter punishment to the KMT legislator found guilty of pocketing the salaries paid to his legislative aides. Wang stated that the KMT legislator violated the law because he probably did not understand the regulations. Say what again? It seems the KMT legislator used the names of four of his relatives to claim the paychecks for himself, but he did not realize this was against the law. That legislator, Kwan Yuk-noan claimed in his defense that this is the way that they did things, at least on the KMT side of the aisle. On the DPP side, you get indicted and sent to jail.
The stories continue. Also on May 13, the Control Yuan cleared KMT Ma Ying-jeou of censure over the goof-ups and incompetent handling and testing of the Wenshan-Neihu MRT line. The Control Yuan did not indict Ma on these charges; instead they met with him "for tea" and decided it must be the fault of those underneath him. Ma was only Mayor and the buck had to stop before it reached his office. After they cleared KMT Ma of being responsible for the design and construction of the MRT project, they then also cleared current KMT Mayor of Taipei Hau Lung-bin of any responsibility of carrying out this poor design and not testing it properly. Since KMT Ma was not guilty, KMT Hau also could not be guilty; again it was just those underlings beneath both of them. The buck only stops at the office of those in charge when they are DPP.
A final twist of irony came last week. In a report on the income of the various high-ranking officials in the land, it was noted that the personal income of Ma Ying-jeou dropped in the past two years by about a half-million US$. By a strange set of circumstances and coincidences, that was the same time when Ma's secretary was in jail for having earlier put an extra US$ one half million into Ma's bank account. Poor Ma, once you lose a good secretary, they are hard to replace aren't they.
