There are a lot of stories I want to tell, but it's sometimes hard to figure out how to get a picture that goes with it. Finally I was able to get a picture of Taiwan's "first" elected president, Chen Shui-Bian. This picture, as well as the one from yesterday, are from exhibits inside the president's office building.
Technically this gentleman was not the first president of Taiwan, nor the first directly elected president of Taiwan. Chiang Kai-Shek was the first "president" of Taiwan, while Lee Teng-hui was the first president elected from direct elections. However he had already been the President for the previous 8 years, and it's highly suspect how free that election really was. So let's just agree that for all intents and purposes Cheng Shui-Bian was the first elected president of Taiwan back in 2000.
He was a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) so this marked the first time the KMT were not in control of Taiwan. When running for reelection in 2004, it was a very tight race, until mysteriously he was shot the night before the election. This obvious ploy was what was needed to trick voters into thinking that if somebody wants to kill him, than he must be important, so he won the election. It was a ploy because nobody was arrested and the case was quickly closed. Also he was 100% ok the next day, and had no scars. There is even debate about if he even bothered to go to the hospital. However reports at that time were that he was in critical condition. As I had just arrived in Taiwan, this was my first experience with political gamesmanship in Taiwan.
During his second term, accusations of corruption came out. They claimed he was stealing money from special government funds. He was also accused of money laundering, and having a bank account in switzerland with 31 million usd in it. His wife also faced some of these allegations, as well as some scandal about being paid in gift certificates for a local department store, and/or using them as currency. His step son faced charges of insider trading.
After his term as president ended, they all went to court, with the result being that he and his wife have to serve 20 years in jail. Actually his wife had been given only 1 year, but after he was president, there was a retrial and she got 19 more years partly because of her conviction of perjury as well.
I apologize if this is all hard to follow, being here so long and hearing about it over the years, it's hard for me to keep things straight, especially with both political parties distorting the truth, and rulings and information changing when different parties are in charge.
To be honest, from what little that seems clear, while what he did was definitely bad, i don't see how it was any different from any other politician, in Taiwan, or America. Then again, I give credit to Taiwan for actually not allowing this and jailing him, however who knows how much of that is politically motivated.
A few random other notes about his presidency...
He led a campaign to change the title of everything that had the word "china" in it. For example the post office in taiwan is "China postal service" and he wanted to take the name "china" out of it, in an effort to further separate Taiwan from China. This didn't happen to the post office, but it did happen to many groups and places. This effort cost Taiwan millions of dollars, and guess what, when the next president came into office, some of those things that had "china" taken out, were changed to have the "china" put back in. Costing millions of dollars yet again.
One of the items on display there was a suit he wore that is supposedly bullet proof. Thankfully i'm not an expert on bullet proof attire, however looking at that suit, there seems no way that it was bullet proof, as it was way too thin. Perhaps just another way to perpetuate his getting shot story.
Finally, his son was looking to go to law school in america, and had been accepted to the law school at the University of Virginia (recently called the best university in America by a certain academic) however when the school found out about all the allegations against his family, they rescinded his acceptance.
Ok that's it. I hope I can go back to here soon, I need to take more pictures of some of the other former "presidents" of Taiwan. A few of them have some very interesting stories. Chiang Kai-shek's son in particular has an incredible story. Sneak peak for that story....his marrying a white lady may be the reason why he eventually ended martial law.
