The View from Taiwan

The Taiwan News has the key points of the ruling in the Ma case:
1. The judges decided not to allow as evidence the testimony of witness Wu Li-ru, a Taipei City government treasurer, as they sided with Ma’s lawyers’ argument that Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen asked Wu hypothetical questions. The judges added that Wu only said [...]

It was a foregone conclusion, as the System was never going to convict its own fair-haired boy, but it was formalized today as Ma was cleared today of embezzlement:

Taipei District Court today (14) announced the opposition presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), cleared from the prosecution of his embezzlement trail. Ma was chairman of the Kuomintang [...]

Prosecutors have asked for 28 years in the case of Gary Wang, yet another in a long line of businessmen who allegedly regarded their companies as personal playgrounds, wrecking the lives of thousands in the process. Wang’s father, head of the once-powerful Rebar group, is on the run in the US as a result of [...]

Frank Hsieh, the DPP presidential candidate, is apparently being charged in a bribery case. The Taipei Times gives the background:
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that the SIS had reopened the investigation and decided to list Hsieh as a defendant “because prosecutors had discovered a lot of new evidence, which may impact on Hsieh’s [...]

A local court has invalidated the Kaohsiung Mayoral election.

Judges decided that accusations Chen’s camp made regarding Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英), her main rival, on the eve of the election and on the polling day influenced election results.
The district court stressed in a news release that “Chen’s polling-day action of making public a videotape showing a man [...]

Taiwan News reports that Swiss authorities returned a portion of the funds frozen in Swiss bank accounts from the notorious Lafayette kickback scandal (long review, shorter piece)
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A few weeks ago I blogged on the farm association issue. This recently resurfaced when pan-Blue lawmakers relaxed the already loose laws governing the associations, to enable the Blue politicians who run them to continue to (allegedly) pillage them. There are around three hundred of these organizations in Taiwan, and last month some 200 of [...]

Linda Arrigo and Jerome Keating alert the world to a presentation on the KMT’s asset issue.
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To all,Linda Arrigo passes on an upcoming presentation on the KMT property and division of wealth in Taiwan after WWII on June 10, Sunday at National Taiwan Normal Univ. (Shida) This is what is often referred to as the “stolen [...]

The Special Funds continue to wreak havoc among Taiwan’s politicians…the Taiwan News reports:
The ruling party’s 2008 presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and four other party heavyweights will not be questioned over the alleged misuse of their special allowances until July at the earliest, the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s special investigation panel disclosed yesterday.
However, prosecutors will wrap [...]

Scams are a way of life on the Beautiful Isle. Yesterday my neighbor stopped by and she and my wife fell to discussing some that had happened to her. An old woman who collects recycling stuff and sells it to get by, she hardly has a cent, but nevertheless, thieves have ransacked her house twice.
She [...]

During the martial law period the KMT government fostered a personality cult around the figure of Chiang Kai-shek (the Australian academic Jeremy Taylor has done a sterling job of chronicling the development and ramifications of this cult, and political religion in general in Taiwan). The ultimate realization of this personality cult is of course the [...]

I’ve been tracking this shameful power grab by the KMT involving the farmers’ associations the last few days (long article and update), and today the Taipei Times came out with a nice bit of analysis on this issue:
Two newly passed amendments that would allow directors of farmers and fishermen’ associations to stay in their posts [...]

Just yesterday I put up a long post explaining how the farmers associations are (ab)used by the KMT to enhance that party’s control over rural areas, and today Taiwan News is reporting that the Executive Yuan has asked the Legislature (meaning the Pan-Blues) to reconsider the two disgusting bills that weaken protections for the farmers [...]

The past few days the Taipei Times has been running articles on the changes at one of the most important of the nation’s rural institutions, the farmer’s associations. According to this 2005 paper, Taiwan has 281 local farmers’ associations, 21 city and county farmers’ associations and one provincial farmers’ association. “These local farmers’ associations are [...]

Augh! Gack! Snarl! Over the last several months this blog has reported extensively on the Shih Ming-teh Red Ant anti-Chen campaign. Anyone who has read it is comprehensively familiar with the facts of the case, as well as a broad set of interpretations, both pro- and anti-Shih (see my archives page, where it has its [...]