The injustice of Chen Shui-bian's detention

When they come for you, will there be anyone left to speak up?

Friend of Taiwan Luby Liao has a petition online demanding the immediate release of former President Chen Shui-Bian (陳水扁). The text of the petition reads as follows:

We the undersigned decry the increasing abuse of power by Taiwan's Ministry of Justice and its prosecutors as they violate the human rights of Taiwan's former president Chen Shui-bian and deny him due process of law in the current case against him. While neither making a judgment as to the guilt or innocence of Chen, we are appalled at the way that he is being unduly imprisoned (over 160 days and counting) as well as how his attorney-client privileges have been violated. In contrast to numerous past violators of money-laundering from the opposite political camp who have either never been detained or have received only a slap on the wrist by the courts when found guilty, Chen is being hounded and persecuted in what is an apparent political vendetta.

We hereby condemn the persecution and the violation of human rights conducted by the justice system and demand that Chen be released immediately.

Here's my own contribution (I'm #43) plus links that I didn't include in the original [as usual, hover your cursor on the links for more info]:

From the recording of Chen's conversations with his lawyers, to the judges' skit mocking Chen, to the one-sided leaks of information to the pro-KMT-dominated media, to the release of a wanted criminal who made statements against Chen, to the switching of the presiding judge to the same one who declared Ma Ying-jeou innocent (in a case where Ma admitted to depositing around NT$15 million of what he called "public funds" into his personal bank account) [Correction: "only" about NT$11 million went into his and his wife's accounts, but another NT$80,000/month (times eight years = NT$7,680,000) was used "to reward staff members," too], to the latest tacked-on charges, to punishing Chen for using hunger strikes to protest this kangaroo court, this has been a total travesty of justice.

On the blog with the petition, you can also sign up for the "I Love Taiwan" Google Group.

Why should I speak up?
If you have any doubts whatsoever, perhaps a reminder of the words of Martin Niemöller will help you make up your mind:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.

Now's your chance. Say something.

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John Hancocks: Taiwan, 台灣, Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, special allowance fund, 特支費, petition, 簽署

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Ma Ying-jeou acquittal documentation online

Got headache?

Via a post on SocialForce, I've turned up a link to the official acquittal document (Big-5) from the Judicial Yuan regarding their "not guilty" verdict in the special allowance case of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) earlier today.

How can anyone believe or accept that the judge's basis for acquittal was that Ma "didn't know" that what he did was wrong? Anyone who believes Ma didn't know any better needs to watch this video (again), in which Ma told us (11 months ago) that he knew perfectly well that the special allowance was strictly to be used for public matters, not private ones like paying his daughter's credit card bills.


1:59 YouTube video: "顏聖冠質詢馬英九"
(Taipei City Councilor Yen Sheng-kuan interpellates Ma Ying-jeou)
Remembering "the gecko's tail"
We should also not forget about Ma's staffer Yu Wen (余文), who was sentenced to 14 months in jail for his role in this. If he was guilty of a crime, why isn't Ma? After all, Yu just collected the receipts.

Working hard for nihilist principles
Ma is saying that an appeal would be "pointless" (虛耗) despite his own multiple appeals of many cases against him, including one involving a SARS death, another about the Tunghsing Building (東興大摟) that fell during the 921 Earthquake of 1999, and another that has to do with his refusal as Taipei mayor to pay the city's share for health insurance fees to the National Bureau of Health Insurance. Furthermore, despite the pointless mess generated by the "redshirt" madness that occurred not only on his watch but with his assistance (and which is planning to resurrect its pointlessness in Taipei next month), he says this would be "pointless" for all of Taiwan. Yes, the man must have no mirrors.

It's also too bad for Ma that KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yi (吳敦義) made those threats of violence last week (LINKS: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) in the event of a conviction against Ma, because they give his opponents yet another very good reason to dispute the neutrality of this blatantly ridiculous decision and call for an appeal.

RELATED:
Be sure to also read Michael Turton's earlier post on the topic.

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Filed under: Taiwan, 台灣, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, special allowance fund, 特支費, Wu Den-yi, 吳敦義, YouTube

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

10 or so sources of KMT brainwashing

His brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned.
- actor Khigh Dhiegh, playing the role of Dr. Yen Lo in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate

In KMT-world, black is still white
Yet again, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has lost a big election by a small margin, and their immediate response of their Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英) was to demand that the election be invalidated. Let me just say for the record that it's exactly the response I expected to see from a party I've referred to as "sore losers" and "crybabies" so many times in the 3-1/2 years or so that I've been blogging.

Another unsurprising thing was that when confronted with evidence of KMT vote-buying, party chairman Ma Ying-jeou, currently entangled in allegations of pocketing loads of dough from his "special allowance," would cry "自導自演" (loose translation: "It was staged."), even though that tactic is a standard pan-blue trick.

Got colic?
The poow wittow kwybabies! For most of their existence, they controlled 100% of the media, and they still control a large portion of it. For this reason, whatever they said "became" the truth, since anyone who said otherwise was drowned out by a vast ocean of KMT voices.

Enter the 'Net
These days, they don't have the kind of total control that is necessary to get away completely with such things, but old habits die hard, and they're still reflexively using the same tactics, despite the ability of anybody with access to a computer and an Internet connection to use free services such as Blogger and YouTube to outflank the KMT's rigorous control of the flow of information.

By the time Huang lost the mayoral election in Kaohsiung this past Saturday by 1,114 votes, the KMT propaganda machine was already spinning in high gear and making obnoxious noises, but Huang and Ma weren't the only ones making such noises.

He's stupid and ugly, and nobody likes him
Tell me if this isn't obnoxious. The director of the KMT's Kaohsiung headquarters during the recent campaign, Hsu Fu-ming (許福明), let loose this unfortunate choice of words in response to his party's slim loss to DPP candidate Chen Chu.

[My transcript:]
高雄市教育水準比較偏低的。這些選民尤其是在很多媒體特別是地下電台長期以來這個本土意識的這個... 這個... 洗腦。

[My translation:]
The standard of education in Kaohsiung is rather low. These voters have been, er, brainwashed by many media outlets for a long time with ideas about local identity, especially by underground radio stations.

The video of that statement was rebroadcast by FTV on the show "頭家來開講" ("Boss Talk") and subsequently uploaded to TaiwanUS.net where it can now be seen world-round. (Click the button for video #2 below the embedded player. Hsu is the fourth person to speak.) In all fairness, Mr. Obnoxious did step down to "take responsibility" for the election loss (only to be immediately replaced by an exact replica?).

Here, there be pirates!
It's quite simple to explain the existence of "underground" radio stations in Taiwan. Because the KMT controlled all of the media for several decades, and people naturally fight against unjust oppression, it was the most mobile, most easily-hidden, cheapest, and most effective method of counter-propaganda, and was thus the one that flourished.

Although many of the stations have subsequently become legally authorized broadcasters, some still exist in the deep-blue ocean that is Taiwan's media environment because it is also an attempt to maintain local-language programming (such as the sound effects and dialog from traditional Taiwanese puppet-show theater or music in the Hakka language) in a place where people with "star status" brashly say that speaking Taiwanese is "low class" and where political shows like the ones hosted by Taiwanese activist Wang Ben-hu are taken off the air because they were "too local" (as opposed to what -- "suitably Chinese"?).

Who's brainwashing whom?
As promised in the title, here are more than 10 examples of where you can see the KMT's brainwashing tactics still in force, without any sort of interdiction from the unconstitutional, pan-blue dominated National Communications Commission (NCC). These are the kinds of media spigots whose language policies are visible by their use of words like "大陸"
("mainland") or "內地" ("inland China") instead of just saying "中國" (China), which promote kids who blindly imitate their elders, which have "entertainers" like the one ("小馬") pretending to check his watch while imitating the "thumbs down" gesture of the anti-Chen movement, and who have hosts on multiple shows who make shit up out of thin air like "a bullet can't make a hole like that in a window" or "somebody called me and told me Chen Shui-bian staged his own shooting, but I can't tell you who they are":

* 東風電視 ("Dong Feng" AKA Azio TV)
Taiwan? How do we "love" thee? We give thee and thine an entire TV station with the same name as one kind of Chinese missile. I say they can stick that Dong Feng right up their Azio!

* 2100 全民開講 ("Speaking Your Mind at [9 PM]") (TVBS)
General manager Lee Tao (李濤) does his worst Larry King impression while saying that two right out of ten is good enough for him. Is he talking to people with "high standards"?

* 新聞夜總會 ("News Night Club") (TVBS)
Lee's wife, Lee Yen-chiu (李豔秋), attempts to convince viewers that the DPP's resistance to authoritarian rule is worse than the KMT's resistance to democracy and performs other bescarfed acts of ill-logic.

* 搞董新聞 ("Explaining the News") (TVBS)
So-called analysts "enter-splain" [my neologism of the day] the news while mostly spinning and rumormongering. I wouldn't buy a used scooter from any of these people.

* 新聞龍鳳配 ("Dragon and Phoenix") (ETTV)
Mouthpieces mouth off until their faces look like they'll crack at any moment. If you've seen the movie "They Live," you'll know what I see when I look at these people, even without the special sunglasses.

* 周末談政治 ("Weekend Political Chat") (ETTV)
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), whining ever since his loss to Chen Shui-bian in the 1994 Taipei mayoral election, lets the BS flow. Read about the jabber-Jaw and his gangster brother on pp. 9 - 12 of this PDF file (~435 KB).

* 全民大悶鍋 ("Pressure Cooker") (CTiTV)
"Making fun" of both sides, while pushing the memes of only one. (Can you guess which?)

* 文茜小妹大 ("Sisy Chen, Gangster Gal") (CTiTV and terrestrial station CTV)
Sisy Chen (陳文茜) and Emile Sheng (盛智仁), together like peas in a pod -- except for the fact that they're both totally red!

* 文茜的世界周報 (Sisy's World News) (CTiTV)
Sisy Chen, again, tells ethnic Chinese in Taiwan (Wait -- I thought they thought Taiwan was part of China!) the "news they mustn't miss" about China (and that other "outland" called international-something-or-other).

* 火線雙嬌 ("Two Women Under Fire") (Videoland)
Brings together 2 hosts with such "varied" backgrounds as China Times, Era News, TVBS, CTi, and ETTV. Oh, wait! Those are practically all the same thing.

* 超級新聞駭客 ("Super News Hacker") (Star TV Mandarin)
Yet another piece of super-crap from super-hack Jaw Shaw-kong.

This one's been dry cleaned
With so may flavors to choose from, it's no wonder KMT legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) has drunk boatloads too much of her own party's Kool-Aid. A report in ETToday tells us that on Tuesday Ho said that the 冤魂 ("the ghost of a person who was wrongly put to death or murdered") of Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄) (the guy who all evidence points to as having shot Chen Shui-bian on March 19, 2004) came to her in a dream and told her that he didn't want the "key man" accused in a case of buying votes on behalf of mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying to end up like him. By the way, the person who is suspected of actually putting the money into voters' hands and telling them to vote for Huang has already admitted to doing so.

To me, Ho's "dream" could mean any or all of the following: 1) She needs psychiatric help. (Most people have weird dreams from time to time, but only a very small number willingly put them in the news and use them to try to influence the public's perception of their political opponents.); 2) The KMT is planning to have the guy offed, and she's prepping the public for the blame to be placed upon the DPP; 3) The problem of uneducated and easily-brainwashed people is not with Kaohsiung's voters, but rather some of the KMT politicians in that area.

Pre-completion update
It seems that another suspect in the Kaohsiung vote-buying case turned himself in to police early Thursday morning while yet another fled to Hong Kong, and a connection to Huang Chun-ying seems to exist. I'll add those details as I find them. [See UPDATE below.]

Bonus examples
I've written previously about the perpetuation of this kind of brainwashing here and here. Go back and view those pages again, even if you think you remember them well. You may see them in a different light this time around.

UPDATE: Here are some of Friday's articles related to the above.

* Taipei Times - Suspect in vote-buying scheme turns himself in
Key point: Ku Hsin-ming (古鋅酩) turns himself in, says he worked independently and just wanted to do something good, but then implicates 43-year-old suspect surnamed Yang. Excerpt: "A profile of Ku showed that he had received a 16-year sentence for a murder committed in 1989 but that he was released during an amnesty in 1994." Quote: "The prosecutors must look deeply into the case and find out who he contacted during the past four days. They must also find out why he chose to give an exclusive interview [to the Liberty Times]," [KMT chairman] Ma [Ying-jeou] said. Comments: Judging from Ma's response, I'd say Ku probably went to the Liberty Times so as to deflect blame off of the KMT. A murderer who "admired Huang and hoped he would be elected as Kaohsiung mayor"? Wow!

* Liberty Times - 檢出示同鄉會傳真 古供出實情 [Translation: Investigator shows fax from Partner Township Association, Ku confesses what really happened]
Key point: After investigators confront Ku with faxes and records of phone calls between the Kaohsiung City/Yunlin County Partner Township Association, Yang Ching-teh (楊慶德), and himself, he admits that he worked in coordination with the others. Additional info: The image below is just above this article in the print edition. Observation: Friday night's FTV News showed video of Su Wan-chi (ph) (蘇萬其) onstage during a campaign rally right up front and next to KMT candidate Huang Chun-ying. Comment: Yowzer! The plot thickens, eh? Question: What evidence will Ma Ying-jeou reveal with his next spin attempt?


* Taiwan News - Vote-buying suspect turns himself in
Key point: When suspects disappear and their stories change, suspicions are naturally aroused. Quote: "Yang reportedly left the country on a 7:45 flight headed for Hong Kong on Wednesday night." Comment: Since 1997, that means the same thing as "fled to China."

* Taipei Times - Hau picks two key players for team
Key point: Taipei mayor-elect Hau Lung-bin (KMT) chooses "special assistant to the chairman of the Chinese-language China Times" Yang Hsiao-tung (羊曉東) "as director of the city government's information department." Comment: How 1984!

* Taipei Times - Pirate radio station operators protest outside NCC
Key point: An unconstitutional body ironically works hardest at enforcing unjust laws. Quote: "The threshold that the NCC has set for licensed stations is NT$50 million [US$1.5 million] in assets and capital, which puts licensing totally out of reach of independent operators," said Tsai Chi-feng (蔡吉豐), a pirate radio station owner. Comment: You might ask yourself, haven't they ever heard of blogs?" The answer might be that many of their listeners haven't.

* China Post - Groups protest radio crackdown
First line: "The independent National Communications Commission (NCC) promised yesterday to continue cracking down on the rampant underground radio stations in Taiwan." Comments: "[I]ndependent"?! 屁! "[R]ampant"?! That would describe pan-blue brainwashing.

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Agents and reagents: Taiwan, 台灣, media, 媒體, propaganda, 宣傳, brainwashing, 洗腦, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, special allowance fund, 特支費, Huang Chun-ying, 黃俊英, Ho Tsai-feng, 侯彩鳳, elections, 選舉, YouTube

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Blatant propaganda from Beijing

This trashy propaganda is characteristic of right-wing zealots who are interested only in slander and character assassination of those whose views or philosophies differ from or are in contradiction to theirs.
- American poet Amiri Baraka, purportedly writing about something completely different

There are some who call me... Nostra-Timmus?
In a post early Saturday morning, I "foresaw" the inevitable:

And don't forget, when you read that President Chen "survived a third recall attempt" in Saturday's papers, it means little more than he "walked on barely warm coals while wearing fireproof boots."

Lo and behold, a comment by Kerim Friedman (Keywords) led me to a reeking, (admittedly day-old), full rubbish bin from Jonathan Watts in Guardian Unlimited which ran under a red banner absurdly reading "Special Report China" and which bore a lede that was about as jam-packed with propaganda as it could possibly be:

The Taiwanese president survived with just one MP's support and his weakness could make him dangerous, writes Jonathan Watts

That's pretty base. How low can Watts go?
As I pointed out in my reply to Kerim, this Watts character is based in Beijing, and the propaganda that comes through his article couldn't be any thicker if his true love were to be found in the pockets of the Chinese Communist Party. That's four points of five-star propaganda -- just in the intro!

But, guess what. The propaganda does grow even thicker as Watts strokes it for every last gooey drop.

Put away your handkerchiefs, and get out your vomit bags
Here I've extracted just the propaganda -- and for the sake of your health, this is only from the first half of the article:

Pyrrhic victories ... painful ... humiliating distinction ... support of only one member ...

Bruised, unpopular and outmanoeuvred ... increasingly wobbly - and possibly dangerous ...

[...]

... Mr Chen can take no comfort in the manner of his survival. A majority of parliamentarians voted against him. ... Only one came out solidly on the side of the president with a "no" vote.

... a new low point for Mr Chen ... calamitous year ... his wife charged with corruption, his approval rating slip below 20% and many of his most powerful overseas supporters in the US turn their backs on him.

It is a far cry from 2000 ... Hopes were high then that he would end the corrupt practices of the previous Kuomintang administration ...

There are actually six more paragraphs of this nonsense. (Go read the whole thing to see how little I actually removed from those early paragraphs, but be sure to rehydrate at some point along the way.)

There's simply too much in there to take it apart in detail, but if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll know what's innuendo (indictment doesn't equal guilt, the charges are based on selective leaks by rather corrupt political opponents, the "questionable" receipts were supposedly used to account for funds spent on secret diplomatic missions, the Ministry of Audit said to use those receipts before they said not to, etc.), what's distortion (the low "approval rating" comes from polls done by pan-blue media outlets, the "majority" who voted to recall Chen was 100% partisan, 100 legislators either abstained from voting or purposely cast invalid ballots, there was a huge corruption conviction of a Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] legislator on Friday which has been several years in the making, etc.), and what are outright lies. (Could Watts name a single "powerful overseas supporter" who turned their back on Chen? "[D]angerous"? Get the fuck outta here!)

Just open up your eyes, and you'll see
Saturday's Taipei Times presents their editors' impression that Beijing is being "silent" on the Chen recall idiocy. They're obviously not looking in the right places. Despite the omission of "Beijing" in the dateline of Watts' piece, the "rhetoric with Chinese characteristics" is as plain as the nose on my face.

Watts' brighter side?
I have actually seen some writing by Watts that is somewhat critical of Beijing (which is probably difficult to do under the circumstances -- here's more of his writing), but it's abundantly clear that he shouldn't be writing about anything related to Taiwan, because the CCP leaders could hardly have done a better job smearing Chen Shui-bian.

Take Action!
Instead of keeping your feelings bottled up inside or going to your window and screaming "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" read Watts' article for yourself, draw your own conclusions, and only after doing so of your own volition, feel free to make use of the information below to verbally express your feelings. Also, try to be more polite than Watts was honest, as it won't be him with whom you're communicating.

Guardian Unlimited
userhelp@guardian.co.uk
119 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3ER
United Kingdom
PHONE: 020-7278 2332

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Props: Taiwan, 台灣, China, 中國, People's Republic of China, 中華人民公和國, PRC, 中共, Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁, A-bian, 阿扁, pan-blues, 泛藍, 特支費, Her Jyh-huei, 何智輝, recall, 罷免, propaganda, 宣傳

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Third attempt to recall Taiwan president Chen fails

On my tombstone just write, 'The sorest loser that ever lived.'
- baseball coach Earl Weaver, ejected from more games than anyone in Major League history

Third time still unlucky
(or maybe it's got nothing to do with luck)
The third attempt in less than six months by Taiwan's opposition pan-blues to recall President Chen Shui-bian, purportedly due to allegations of corruption, has failed miserably. Only 118 legislators voted in favor of recalling Chen, once again falling way short of the 2/3 required for the motion to be put to a public referendum.

Ironically, one of those very people shouting the faux "anti-corruption" slogans in the Legislative Yuan Friday was sentenced the very same day to 19 years in prison for corruption, theft, and breach of trust in relation to amounts over NT$1 billion.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator and former Miaoli County Commissioner Her Jyh-huei (何智輝) was convicted on charges related to a NT$1.1 billion loan obtained by using land valued at NT$100 million as collateral. Not so long ago, Her had fled to China to avoid being investigated (he returned in order to form the unconstitutional, kangaroo-court-like "319 Truth Commission" [MORE: 1, 2]), and in an apparent attempt to influence the outcome of his case, registered to become a member of the Legislative Yuan's Judiciary Committee (司法委員會). As recently as 2004, the beleaguered Taipei mayor/KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou, currently under investigation for abuse of his "special allowance fund," supported Her's candidacy when running for legislative office, calling him "honest and simple" (淳樸). Birds of a feather and all that.

Third time, still not charmed
According to an article by the AP's Peter Enav in Guardian Unlimited, "lawmakers from Chen's Democratic Progressive Party did not participate in the poll [and] 12 members of the Taiwan Solidarity Union - a DPP ally - deliberately spoiled their ballots" this time. Note the clear partisan lines in addition to Her's conviction on much more serious charges, and you will see that the recall attempts have absolutely nothing to do with opposing corruption.

Give up!
Even though the first attempt came up with 119 votes in favor of the recall, and the second time around only got 116 votes, Chen's stubborn sore-loser opponents just don't know when to throw in the towel. The third attempt got only two more than the second attempt but one vote fewer than the first try, yet the pan-blues are already saying that they want to go for four-in-a-row. Remember, they need 28 more votes than they got this time in order for the motion to pass, and then it has to be put to a public referendum.

Enough, already! Even after 2 months of organized street protests, there is no general support for the anti-Chen crowd's anti-democratic efforts. The pan-blue legislators are also wasting millions, if not billions, of Taiwanese taxpayer dollars by dilly-dallying around in the Legislative Yuan with this nonsense instead of passing legislation to move Taiwan's democracy forward and keep it safe from China's threats.

And don't forget, when you read that President Chen "survived a third recall attempt" in Saturday's papers, it means little more than he "walked on barely warm coals while wearing fireproof boots."

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Things to remember: Taiwan, 台灣, Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁, A-bian, 阿扁, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨, pan-blues, 泛藍, recall, 罷免, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, special allowance fund, 特支費, Her Jyh-huei, 何智輝, Judiciary Committee, 司法委員會, propaganda, 宣傳, corruption, 貪污

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

The differences between the cases of Ma Ying-jeou and Chen Shui-bian

Curiouser and curiouser

In reference to the disparity between comments a couple of months ago saying that Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) finances were clean as a whistle and the current situation regarding his special allowance fund where the stink is so thick you can see it, the Ministry of Audit's vacillating spokesperson Wang Yung-hsing (王永興) said recently, "越說越複雜" ("The more that's said, the more complicated it gets"). The thing is, however, that the more complicated it gets for the KMT -- actually for all of the pan-blues and all of the anti-Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) crowd -- the more clearly the public can see the pure hatred, the lack of reason, and the double standards upon which the opposition crowd's actions are based.

One of the big differences here is that the accusations against President Chen are focused on the items whose receipts were used to cover expenditures of the "state affairs fund," but not even prosecutor Eric Chen (陳瑞仁) has said that the money in question went into the president's pockets. No, that case is all about a lack of evidence, yet the anti-Chen crowd has been demanding for the president to step down because that's the only thing which will satisfy their vampiric thirst.

Enter the horseshit
There's a Mandarin phrase similar to Wang's above that suits Ma's special allowance fund. It goes "越描越黑" ("The more one tries to cover up a scandal, the more it stinks"). As pro-democracy author Jerome F. Keating has said, the accusations have opened up a Pandora's Box for the accusers. Let's take a look at the contradictions they have revealed about themselves.

Back in June of this year, more than four months before the indictments were even issued against the First Lady and three presidential aides, Ma himself said that President Chen would "die a horrible death" if he didn't voluntarily step down at that time. [Here's a Google cache of an article containing the original quote in Mandarin.] The shoe is on the other foot now, and Ma has said that even if he's indicted himself, he would only give up his KMT chairmanship. Cutting through the thick odor of that deep pile of horseshit, I can still clearly smell the stench of a double standard.

Exit the gecko's tail
Taipei City staffer Yu Wen (余文) has been referred to as the "gecko's tail" (from the Mandarin phrase "斷尾求生" or "Sever tail, save life"). In order to escape a predator's grip, a gecko will gladly let go of its tail. Yu, despite having to submit an average of only four receipts per day, claims that receipts for larger amounts were substituted for purchase of smaller amounts in order to reduce paperwork. Ma has called this a mere "administrative defect" for which he apologized, and he hopes we'll all just ignore the obvious.

It is being said by many that by diverting blame to Yu and saying "Oops," Ma is using the gecko's strategy to save his ass. Here's the kicker (from the article about the "defect") which reveals to careful observers that this is merely a diversion:

"Although I knew nothing about it and so far there is no evidence to prove [my staffer] pocketed the money, I still need to shoulder administrative, political and moral responsibility for this blemish ... I offer my sincere apologies to Taipei residents," Ma told a press conference at Taipei City Hall.

Red herring/straw man alert! I don't believe anyone is accusing Yu of pocketing any money. But there's still the looming question of the other NT$170,000/month which requires no receipts that Mayor Ma has been sucking up for nearly 8 years. While he's over a month shy of that duration, the full amount would come to NT$16,320,000.

紅包拿來! ("Where's my red envelope?")
What about the other NT$170,000/month? Taipei City Government Secretariat Director Lee Shu-te (李述德) claims that about NT$80,000/month was used "to reward staff members," according to an article in Friday's Taipei Times. (Ah, the perks of working for these people!) Over a period of 8 years, that would be another NT$7,680,000 that was used not for administrative purposes, but rather to pad the pockets of those in City Hall. Add that to the previous number, and we now have almost NT$24,000,000 of government money going into the pockets of Ma and his employees. There's no question about this -- it is what has been admitted by Ma and his staff. Remember, the accusations being flung in the direction of President Chen have to do with receipts amounting to NT$14,800,408. Again, even if it's only this portion of Ma's money that has problems, there's still a huge double standard at work.

Mayor's Office Director Cheng An-kuo (鄭安國), whose resignation Ma accepted on Wednesday, admitted that all of that money went directly into Ma's personal bank account. It looks like the tailless gecko is now missing its forelimbs.

Taipei Information Department Director Lo Chih-cheng (羅智成) also admitted to some key points during an on-air phone call to SET's (三立電視) "Talking Show" (大話新聞). First, he admitted that Ma deposited the NT$170,000/month which didn't require receipts into his personal account. He also admitted that Ma subsequently declared that money as part of his personal assets in a statement to the Examination Yuan, though he said he didn't know how much it was altogether. Bye bye, hind legs! Remember, Chen Shui-bian denies similar charges, and no evidence exists that he has pocketed any of the money. The question is all about why he used receipts for things from magazines to diamonds to cover those expenses, and the very simple answer is that the Ministry of Audit told him to do so (before telling him much later not to do so).

Another way Ma is trying to avoid the "jaws of death" is by saying he'll donate NT$15,000,000 to charity. How amusing! If I stole your money and then donated a portion of it (no matter how large) to charity, I would be totally avoiding two things: 1) paying back the victim; and 2) atoning for the crime. The law requires that Ma return the unused portion of those funds to an account specifically for the purpose of collecting that remaining money, and Ma apparently did not follow this law. He also seems to have gotten in the "charitable" mood just within the past few days. Can you say "cover-up"?

No longer in possession of a tail which can be easily detached (since no one else can take the blame for putting the money in Ma's personal account) or even of any more limbs, Ma's head would appear to be on the chopping block. [Troll repellent: this is a metaphor regarding his political career.]

Taking responsibility
Actually, even if Ma would resign to feign "responsibility" for this (something I suggested not so long ago), it would amount to nothing more than a show on his part. There's less than a month remaining until the mayoral election. The main point is not that he needs to step down or go to jail -- it's simply that he needs to apply the same standards to his opponents or shut the fuck up.

Remember, there haven't been any rotting corpses discovered on the balconies of the Presidential Office under Chen's administration, but there has been one at Taipei's City Hall under Ma's watch. That's something that deserves much more attention.

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Horses and carriages: Taiwan, 台灣, Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁, A-bian, 阿扁, state affairs fund, 國務機要費, special allowance fund, 特支費, Wang Yung-hsing, 王永興, Ministry of Audit, 審計部, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!