Feiren has expanded and updated his post, so I thought I'd get it up here:There is a much more detailed article in the China Times now. Pacific Distribution Investment Co Chairman Lee Heng-lung withdrew gift vouchers worth NT$14.83 million from Sogo. Lee then gave Chen family doctor Huang Fang-yen vouchers through Huang's driver. Huang used the vouchers to make purchases totalling NT$2,190,500. He gave vouchers to the Chen family as gifts, and Wu Shu-chen and her two children made purchases totalling NT$277,000.
Chen's political enemies will insist that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that prosecutors were bought off. But the relatively small amounts involved highlight how quick the media and the rest of they baying pack were to rush to judgment that the entire Chen administration was rotten to the core.
The wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Dark Side is palpable.
[Taiwan]
3 comments:
"relatively small amounts"? NT$277,000 worth of spent vouchers is hardly peanuts.
It's small compared to the US$400 million handed out to the KMT leadership over the Lafayette scandal....
At one time, Taiwan to foreigners was a place where time nearly stood still, and so we hoped for ourselves it would be the same. But we grew older, and things did change.
I suspect that an amount of NT$277,000 is a large amount to many newer foreigners who are concerned about the situation here. Purely business people would see all of this in different terms.
But, so many people have never learned or have forgotten about the murders and total denial of human rights that once existed here, if one had the insanity of crossing an invisible line that marked almost total freedom in one's own life on one side and challenging the government on the other side, which was a pure and simple invitation for a mysterious death.
That the DPP learned some of this and was unable to totally divorce themselves from all the traditions is not surprising. A few bribes here and there still do not equal the horrors of threat, torture, and murder.
It is a pity that both Ma and Soong do not leave politics and become historians. The facts that they could put on the table would astound people who only worry about money, but forget the value of a human life.
But, who wants to contemplate a KMT takeover again if they have experiences or studied the 60 years of this island? That is an interesting question.
Everything must be put in perspective, and nearly 100 percent of what I have read about the situation here does not do that.
And, I remain anonymous here. See, old traditions die hard. I have lived more than half of my life here, and I am well past the halfway to being a man of 100.
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