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Updated Tuesday, May 20, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By David Ting, Special to the China Post

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Goodbye and good riddance to former president Chen

One of Chen Shui-bian’s famous quotes is “to dream is beautiful, wherein hope lies.” He won Taipei’s mayoral election in 1994, and Taiwan’s presidential election in 2000 with these enticing, charming words. Now, eight years after his presidency, the dream the people once dreamt turned out a nightmare; and the hope that the voters pinned on him became a despair.

Chen, the 11th president of the Republic of China who steps down May 20, has let the people down. He squandered eight precious years pursuing an impractical political agenda aimed at gaining Taiwan independence. What he has achieved instead is Taiwan’s international isolation and economic stagnation. His policies not only antagonized mainland China, but also the United States, Taiwan’s sole ally and protector, who called him a trouble-maker.

But his salient legacy should be corruption, quite an irony judging from the fact he and his Democratic Progressive Party rose to power on pledges of a clean government, on fighting against the corruptive Kuomintang, then the ruling party led by former president Lee Teng-hui. In just a few years Chen had disappointed and angered many of his supporters with a string of shocking corruption scandals that made the KMT pale in comparison.

Remember the million-strong “red-shirt army” led by Shih Ming-te, an ex-DPP chairman, who rose up against his erstwhile comrade? Shih, regarded as Taiwan’s Nelson Mandela, was determined to oust Chen from office because of the pervasive, rampant corruption involving himself, his relatives, and his top aides. These red-shirted protesters from all walks of life and all political stripes besieged the Presidential Palace and almost succeeded in de-throning the beleaguered Chen who dug in his heels and refused to step down. But his presidency lost dignity, respectability and trustworthiness.

Due to Chen’s obsession with politics, the economy was left on the back burner. He paid only lip service to the economy. “Fight for the economy” was a favorite slogan of this mendacious president. When Taiwan’s neighbors, including the mainland and South Korea, were sparing no efforts fighting for the economy, Chen was busy with his separatist programs such as referendum on Taiwan’s membership in the United Nations under the name Taiwan instead of its official title — the Republic of China. He was busy with identity politics by re-naming state-owned enterprises and government institutions which carried the name China or Chinese.

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