Lin has known Chen for over 40 years, as law students at National Taiwan University and as defense attorneys in the Kaohsiung Incident trials in the 1980s. In court, Lin said he wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk with Chen. Bringing up their past relationship and then the current situation, Lin broke into sobs several times, with the feeling that “times ain’t now nothing like they used to be.”
Lin said when they were students and the Lockheed bribery scandal broke in Japan, he and Chen were impressed by the power of the law when Tokyo prosecutors detained Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, and they hoped to one day live up to their model. Now Chen has become Lin’s Tanaka to prosecute.
Lin noted the irony between their yearning for justice as young law students and defense attorneys, and Chen, the first lawyer to become ROC president, now being tried for corruption.
If Chen “once was devoted to establishing fine values,” his now needing to be “nailed to the cross” indeed fills one with anguish. This may be why Lin cried, and is even more the cause of the pain most people feel. Lin told Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun: “With regard to the illegal acts of the defendant Chen Shui-bian, the presiding judge must clarify right and wrong, so that present and future leaders will take note and be on their guard.”
This is Lin’s proposal for national justice. He said, “Only by denouncing you (Chen) can others be made to see the difference between right and wrong.” This is precisely how most people feel about the Chen case—that it applies not only to Chen Shiu-bian, but is a call for all those in power to beware of abusing that power.
As the one once holding the reins of government, Chen can be said to have exhausted state powers to feed his corruption: when he used the president’s office as a place to hide bribe money; when his wife Wu Shu-jen used the minister of the interior to do her dirty work in acquiring illicit gains; using the “economic task force” to cook up policies for extorting bribes; calling James Lee, former Hsinchu Science Park director, to the president’s official residence to give him personal instructions on a joint graft project regarding an industrial park in Longtan, Hsinchu—and so on.
Moreover, Chen then exhausted state powers to cover up his corruption: using Bureau of Investigation Director-General Yeh Sheng-mao for personal intelligence; convening high-strata judicial officials in the presidential office to plot how to avoid prosecution; concocting the “South Route Project” with subordinates and forging an inventory of payments for articles to justify the private use of discretionary state funds—and so on.
Then once official investigations had begun, the former president refused to admit guilt and used political manipulation to “persecute justice” (in the words of prosecutor Lin Yi-chun), coerce the Democratic Progressive Party, and rip society apart. With all this, Chen can be said to have used all the political energy coming to him as president to thwart justice. How can a leader such as this be forgiven by the people, or be dealt with leniently by prosecutors like Lin Chin-kang?
Even if Chen once sought to give people the impression of “being devoted to the establishment of fine values,” his reprehensible crimes and base manipulation have thoroughly destroyed that image. Lin spoke modestly, advising Chen to confess to his crimes: “Don’t let others misunderstand that your earlier sacrifices were just political investments.” In truth, Chen has already artfully employed his “political revenues from past sacrifices” to solicit bribes and accumulate illegal wealth, and to cover up his corruption, persecuting justice and disrupting society in the process. Should even the smallest traces of those “fine values” remain in Chen’s heart, how could he be so lawless as to bring so much disorder to the nation?
“Only by denouncing you can others be made to see the difference between right and wrong.” To say Chen’s crimes exceed the ones he’s on trial for does not mean there must be more illegal funds in his possession; it means, instead, that in his position as the nation’s leader, he used up the country’s resources to turn morality and law upside down. If he cannot be “nailed to the cross,” how can “others be made to see the difference between right and wrong”?
As Lin faced his “Kakuei Tanaka,” Chen Shui-bian, in court, he may have recalled the past feelings of youth, but what many people were feeling was a desire to quickly leave behind the ruins Chen created, and move towards a future in which the value of right and wrong can be re-established.
—This article first appeared in the “United Daily News,” July 30, 2009.
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