Sean Lien and the Gang

After seeing my comment on the headline that Sean Lien, son of former Veep and KMT power Lien Chan, now claims the shooter said his name....

Lien's statement overthrew a previous claim made by the alleged gunman Lin Cheng-wei who said that it was a case of misidentification and that his intended target was Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Chen Hung-yuan, a candidate that Lien was stumping for.

“Lien said he clearly heard the gunman calling his name and swearing at him before being shot by the gunman,” said Hsu to reporters yesterday after he talked with Lien in the hospital.

Hsu added that Lien said, however, he could not recall what happened next, maybe due to his head injury. Hsu himself also confirmed Lien's statement, saying that he was also a witness of the shooting and had heard the alleged gunman calling Lien's name.

...my good friend Feiren, a sometime newspaper commentator and longtime resident, left the following comment on the post below....

Yes. And the plot thickens.

Lien told a high ranking KMT official that the shooter Lin Zheng-wei said 'Lien Sheng-wen, you are dead!' before pulling the trigger. Six other witnesses who were on the stage including cops supposedly have told police that Lin said 'Lien Sheng-wen, gan li niang' before shooting.

One of the witnesses, who seen grabbing Lin and preventing further shots, is now being identified as one Liu Zhen-nan (劉振南), now a 'businessman' in the Zhonghe/Yonghe area and the former head of the Bamboo Union's Ai Hall. He just happened to be on stage because he is good friends with the candidate Chen Hong-yuan. Chen and his father run a family construction business [gangster alert!] and the elder Chen used to be the deputy speaker of the Taipei County Council [gangster alert!]. As it happens, the Chen family is trying to develop the Guting market but not all the residents have signed up yet [gangster alert!].

So a known gangbanger shoots the son of a former KMT Chairman who is on stage to endorse a local candidate with links to organized crime. Then a known 'made man' in one of Taiwan's largest criminal organizations just happens to be on stage as well to stop the hit from being successful.

Even by KMT standards, this is pretty good stuff.

To which it should be added, the KMT politicians present instantly recognized the shooter and tweeted his name around. The KMT then went on to exploit this incident for its own political gain, as the Taipei Times observed. I don't think this is some kind of conspiracy. If the KMT had wanted to bump off Sean Lien to gain sympathy votes, they wouldn't have used a shooter whom everyone present would instantly recognize, and they wouldn't have done it in a place that would have called attention to the fact that many people on the platform with the son of a former KMT vice president were local gang members and connected people, at an obscure local rally out in what had been Taipei county.

I think what's really going on here is a diversion. The KMT wants this incident to focus on Lien, not to focus on the embarrassing fact that many local KMT party candidates are local gangsters or gang-affiliated individuals, from temple association members to connected businessmen to the gangster's wives, who run in their place. By making it about Sean Lien, the party draws attention away from its hideously unclean local connections.

It's good to know that President Ma is going to clean up corruption.
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