The trials of Ah-Bian
Sep 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Bringing Taiwan’s former president to trial is ground-breaking. A shame about the judicial flaws
Illustration by M. Morgenstern
A DRAMA that has transfixed Taiwan came to a head on September 11th when Chen Shui-bian, president from 2000 to 2008, was sentenced to life in jail for embezzlement, money-laundering and bribe-taking. A life sentence was also given to his crippled wife. This is not the end of the saga, for a long appeals process stretches ahead. Still, bringing a former leader to book is unprecedented for Taiwan. It is, indeed, an inspiring first in Chinese history for a toppled ruler to be punished by the law rather than the mob. So more’s the pity that the achievement is marred by flaws in the legal system that Mr Chen’s trial has highlighted.
A quick reminder of the plot to date. During the “White Terror” of the Kuomintang (KMT) dictatorship, Wu Shu-chen, a beauty from a well-to-do family, falls for the idealism of a poor tenant-farmer’s son, nicknamed Ah-Bian, who has put his precocious talents as a lawyer into the fight for justice, human rights and democracy. She pays a physical price, when one day at a rally she is hit by a farm truck that runs back and forth three times over her legs. KMT hitmen may have been responsible. She is confined for life to a wheelchair.
Ah-Bian redoubles his battle against dictatorship and corruption. Opposition efforts begin to bear fruit, and democracy comes to Taiwan. In 2000 Ah-Bian himself wins the presidency as head of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), overturning the KMT’s half-century of power. He furthers Taiwan’ s democratisation, always controversially, by restructuring governing institutions and shaping a Taiwanese identity that stands out from mainland China’s. But this lifetime fighter against corruption proves to be very corrupt by any standards—except possibly the past KMT’s.
It has taken three years since the first real whiff of scandal for Mr Chen’s followers to face up to the scale on which their man has let them down. The DPP has felt the trauma in emotional and electoral terms. As for Mr Chen’s psychology, it is a story worthy of great tragedy. Friends say that high office made a humble man arrogant. They also emphasise his family’s suffering. In franker moments Mr Chen confessed to abiding guilt over Miss Wu’s disability. His wife seems to have played on this: didn’t she deserve a few jewels the size of boulders? At heart, this has been Mr Chen’s justification in his few expressions of public remorse, though former supporters think he has not apologised enough.
Yet, for all the revulsion with Mr Chen, the handling of his trial has also raised concerns. At best, many say, the judiciary has one foot stuck in the bad old days. At worst, it takes its orders from the KMT, now back in power.
The main worry has to do with Mr Chen’s detention before and during the trial, including a month in solitary confinement. No one has properly explained why, after the presiding judge freed Mr Chen from pre-trial detention (to loud protests by KMT politicians), the judge was replaced. The new judge, Tsai Shou-hsun, promptly detained Mr Chen again. Mr Tsai happens to have presided over an earlier trial of Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT, now Mr Chen’s successor as president, who was accused of abusing political funds when he was mayor of Taipei in ways that recall Mr Chen’s case. But Mr Tsai acquitted Mr Ma, and gave an aide involved in the abuse a year in jail.
Mr Chen’s supporters, pointing to his life sentence, and to the 20- and 16-year sentences meted out respectively to two of his aides, claim a political vendetta by the KMT, orchestrated by Mr Ma. That would hardly be in keeping with the clean-guy image of Mr Ma, a Harvard-trained lawyer. It would also throw into question how far Taiwan has really come as a law-based democracy. But it is more plausible to blame the trial’s flaws on a legal system that has only imperfectly made the leap from being venal and biddable under dictatorship towards judicial independence and due process. Six years ago Taiwan’s judge-prosecutors were replaced by a system in which impartial judges are meant to hear out the case for the prosecution and the defence. Mr Tsai’s open hostility to Mr Chen during the trial suggests some old-school attitudes are hard to shake off.
What is more, prosecutors’ immense powers, including the practice of interrogating an individual without letting him know what he is said to have done, remain a blot on democracy. Shameful too was the skit performed at the prosecutors’ annual dinner in which mockery was made of Mr Chen famously protesting at the humiliation of having to wear handcuffs. No rebuke came from the government. Now the justice ministry threatens to disbar Mr Chen’s lawyer, Cheng Wen-lung, for questioning the fairness of the judicial process. That smacks, says Jerome Cohen, Mr Ma’s former law professor, now at New York University, of the persecution of human-rights lawyers in China.
Drawing the right conclusions
What conclusions you draw about the future rule of law in Taiwan depend on whether you believe Mr Chen’ s trial was politically motivated or not. If not—and the investigation of Mr Chen, after all, began when he was still president—then the trial of a former president is surely a landmark. What is more, the legal system is responding to the trial’s shortcomings. For instance, thanks to a challenge by Mr Chen, the prosecutors’ insistence that they attend and record meetings between defendants and their counsel has now been ruled unconstitutional.
More telling, the KMT is looking anew at the whole business of murky political funds which the reforming Mr Chen should have addressed as a cancer on democracy, but instead dipped into. And most telling of all is China’s official reaction to the downfall of an enemy loathed for his embrace of Taiwanese independence. The reaction has been very nearly mute. After all, to cheer Taiwan’s pursuit of a corrupt leader might encourage China’s own citizens to draw all the wrong inferences about what should happen to their own rulers.
當陳水扁（台灣2000~2008的總統）在九月十一日， 因貪污，洗錢和受賄而被判處終身監禁時， 整部戲的發展到了最高潮。他殘障的妻子也被判處了無期徒刑。 但這不是事件的結束，長期的上訴程序將會繼續。誠然， 指控前總統犯罪在台灣是史無前例的。但這事件也是激勵人的， 這是在華人歷史上首次以法律而非以暴民逞罰被推翻的領導人。
然而，至為可惜的是， 陳先生的案件凸顯出的司法系統的瑕疵令這個成就（譯注： 指法律之前人人平等的成就）沾上了污點。
簡短的回顧至今的一些歷史片段。吳淑珍，一個富裕家庭的大正妹， 在國民統專制統治台灣的時期，懷抱著理想主義，下嫁了貧農之子， 阿扁；阿扁用他早熟的天才投身於律師事業中，為正義， 人權以及民主而奮鬥。吳淑珍為她的選擇付出了肉身作為代價； 在一次的集會當中，她遭到農用車撞擊，並在她腿上前後碾了三次。 國民黨的打手可能需要為此負責(
感謝R2D2糾正)， 而吳淑珍則必須終身坐在輪椅上生活。
阿扁加倍的與獨裁和貪腐勢力進行戰鬥。 黨外反對的力量逐漸取得成果，民主終於降臨台灣。 2000年的時候阿扁本人擔任民進黨黨主席並贏得總統大選取得總 統職位，推翻了國民黨半世紀以來的統治。總是有所爭議的是， 他進一步藉由重構政府的機關結構以及加強台灣人認圖以深化台灣的 民主。但這位一輩子與貪腐戰鬥的鬥士如今卻被證明為， 以任何標準衡量
- 除了國民黨過去的標準以外 - 他就是貪腐的標誌。
陳水扁的支持者必須面對這個人如何使他們失望， 自從三年前陳的醜聞就開始傳出。 民進黨在情感上以及選舉語言上皆受到了創傷。 而陳先生的心裡也許覺得這是一個非常大的悲劇故事。朋友們說， 位高權重使得一個謙卑的人變得自大； 他們也強調他的家人掙扎痛苦。 在真情流露的時刻陳坦言對吳淑珍的傷殘感到永恆的罪疚。 他的妻子似乎發揮了這一點； 難道她不該得到鵝卵石般大小的寶石作為獎賞嗎？老實說， 這是陳水扁在少數公開道歉中為自己辯護的理由；因此， 陳的前支持者認為他的道歉是不足的。
然而，即使對陳水扁充滿厭惡， 對他的審判的處理程序也引起了關注。從好處想， 部分司法制度仍陷在昔日的泥淖之中；從壞處想， 司法制度再次受命於國民黨。
主要的憂慮是，審判前和審判時拘留陳水扁， 包括一個月的單人囚室。沒有人可合理解釋， 為什麼法官在無保釋放陳水扁後（此舉遭到國民黨政客的大聲抗議） ，法官會被更換。新任法官蔡守訓馬上再次拘留陳水扁。 蔡守訓之前正好審判過國民黨的馬英九-陳水扁總統的繼任者- 在擔任台北市長任內濫用特別費的案件，那時宣判馬英九無罪， 僅判助手（余文）1年刑期。
陳水扁的助理分別被判20年（馬永成）與16年（林德訓）， 他們宣稱這是國民黨與馬英九合奏的政治仇殺交響曲。 這難以維繫哈佛律師馬英九的清白形象， 也引出台灣距離法治民主有多遠的問題。 責難司法體系審判瑕疵更有理的說法是， 從獨裁統治下貪贓枉法與順從（國民黨）， 不完美地跳躍到司法獨立與正當程序。台灣法官─ 檢察官一體在6年前才被打破， 取代的是公正的法官要聽完控訴與辯護雙方論點的體系。 蔡守訓審判期間對陳水扁公開的敵意， 讓人想到某些舊的態度難以被撼動。
檢察官擁有巨大的權力， 包括審問個人而不讓他們知道什麼被記錄了；這些仍是民主的污點。 檢察官在年度晚會演出陳水扁抗議戴上手銬的諷刺劇，也讓人蒙羞； 政府則裝聾作啞。因陳水扁辯護律師鄭文龍質疑審判程序的公平性， 法務部長遂威脅要取消其律師資格。馬英九老師、 現任紐約大學教授孔傑榮(Jerome
Cohen)說，這些動作打了中國人權律師一巴掌。
寫下正確的結語
你對未來台灣法治所下的結論， 取決於你是否相信對陳水扁的審判是出於政治動機或是沒有政治動機 。如果沒有政治動機 -
對陳水扁的審判和對他徹底的調查 - 這一切將會是個里程碑。而且，司法制度正回應其缺點，例如，
感謝陳水扁的案件， 檢察官堅持參與並記錄被告和其律師間的會面的行為， 已經被判定違憲。
更進一步的，國民黨正在重新重組黑暗的政治獻金勢力， 改革者陳水扁曾將這些視為民主政治的毒瘤， 審判他顯示陳反而向下沈淪了。再進一步，中國官方對敵人
- 支持台灣獨立的陳水扁 - 垮台的反應。他們的反應近乎靜音，畢竟， 歡呼台灣追捕貪腐的領導人，可能會鼓勵中國公民做出錯誤推斷， 而在他們領導人身上發生不應該發生的事。
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