MaWangMess: Wiretapping Scandal Expands and other goodies

Pigeon cage outside Dongshih.

The papers were reported today that DPP Whip Ker Chien-ming said that the SID was tapping the legislature's switchboard number....

Earlier in the day Legislator Ker Chien-ming, a caucus whip of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), told the press he had received notice from the court that the wiretapping of his phones had been discontinued, following his acquittal in a breach of trust case.

The notice listed several numbers that had been under surveillance, including his cell phone number and the Legislative Yuan's switchboard number 0972630235, Ker said.

"Even the parliament was being monitored," Ker said at a press conference at the Legislative Yuan, which was also attended by DPP legislators Wu Ping-jui and Kuan Bi-ling.

.....

Meanwhile, at a separate press conference Saturday morning, acting SID spokesman Yang Jung-chung repeatedly denied Ker's accusation, which was reported in a morning newspaper.

The SID "has never eavesdropped on the switchboard of the Legislative Yuan," Yang said several times. He said 0972630235 is the number of a cell phone used by an individual.

However, Tsai Wei-min, head of the Legislative Yuan's General Affairs Department, told the press the same day that the number has been used by the Legislative Yuan since August 2006 as part of a cost saving system.

Readers may recall that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng had been publicly accused by the President of influence peddling by calling the Minister of Justice and having him tell the prosecutors not to appeal a not guilty verdict against Ker. The DPP politicians also said that the SID had been monitoring the prosecutor in the Ker case, which the SID admitted. They admitted that they monitored her 12 year old daughter, accidentally, since she was using her mom's phone (SCMP). They then switched to the husband's phone which Lin Hsiu-tao was using, musical phones being a common feature of busy families.

It is striking that no transcript of the alleged phone calls telling the prosecutor to lay off Ker has been produced by the SID, since it has leaked transcripts of Wang Jin-pyng's phone calls. Indeed, the lack of such leaks suggests that no such transcripts exist. This tends to support Wang's claims that he was just comforting Ker and hadn't done anything.

The case has produced, at least for this observer, many moments of delicious blinding hypocrisy. FocusTaiwan ran another piece saying that the KMT's lawyers told the Taiwan High Court that the party would not work out a political compromise in the Wang case...

Asking the KMT to consider a settlement is tantamount to advising the party to "compromise its insistence upon resisting influence peddling in judicial cases and upon defending the core values of democracy and rule of law, which is an independent judiciary," the statement said.

Anyone remember when the judge in the Chen Shui-bian case got switched? Media personalities gathered this week to protest the wiretapping mess in Taiwan

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC the diplomatic core got egg on its face...

Representative to the US, King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), and Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) Press Division Director Frank Wang (王億) yesterday apologized over a controversial post on the Washington Post Web site, which describes Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) as “former Legislative Speaker.”

Frank Wang said Wang Jin-pyng was the “former Legislative Speaker” in the Washington Post Web site’s readers’ comments column on Sept. 14 and concluded by saying “I’m very glad the [Chinese Nationalist Party] KMT came to resolutely discipline its heavyweight party member.”

Events like this are reminders of how the KMT continues to imagine the State is an appendage of the KMT Party, using the diplomatic corps to comment on and defend what should be an internal matter of the KMT and a domestic politic issue. Note that if they had merely said nothing, or confined themselves to noting in a pro forma fashion how the open political conflict is an indicator of the strength of Taiwan's democracy, they would not now be having to apologize..... this affair continues to be a needless mess entirely the creation of Ma's KMT.... and judging from the comments on Facebook, tomorrow's news will be even funnier.

ADDITIONAL REFS: Jens Kastner with some sensible quotes from John Copper on the MaWangMess.
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