What do our ombudsmen really want?

Wu Feng-shan, a two-term member of the Control Yuan, headed a working group of his colleagues that we believe thoroughly reinvestigated the mystery-shrouded shooting in Tainan on March 19, 2004. President Chen Shui-bian, who is now being tried by an appellate court for corruption, was shot by a gunman on that day. Also shot was his vice president Annette Lu. Both were reelected, thanks to sympathy votes cast that day after what police concluded was an assassination attempt took place on the eve of the 2004 presidential election.

Lien Chan, the Kuomintang standard bearer, contested the outcome of the election, appealing for invalidation of Chen's victory, but the appeal was turned down after a recount of votes had been completed. In the meantime, police concluded after a yearlong investigation that Chen Yi-hsiung, an unemployed martial arts coach, bought a homemade handgun and fired two homemade bullets that grazed President Chen's abdomen and hit Lu's knee. Tainan prosecutors dismissed the case on the grounds that the ex-coach committed suicide ten days after shooting the president and the vice president by drowning himself in a Tainan canal, though he was a good diver. He was quoted as telling his wife he did something wrong and would take responsibility. The wife was shown on TV apologizing for what her husband did in video footage shot by her police investigators. She later complained she offered her apology under duress. No smoking gun was found. Nor were there any witnesses who testified. No wonder the New York Times quipped that the closing of the case was like a yarn once found in a dime store.

The Legislative Yuan formed a truth commission, one like the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was boycotted by the Democratic Progressive Party administration then but probed the shooting incident anyway. The commission couldn't find out the truth and was disbanded.

After President Chen stepped down on May 20 last year, the wife of the alleged gunman appealed to the nation's highest watchdog body for another investigation of the death of her husband. Wu and company obliged.

They claimed they were successful in finding out the gunman did not try to assassinate President Chen. The first shot was directed at Annette Lu, Wu concluded in his investigation report. “It is impossible that if Chen Yi-hsiung wanted to kill President Chen, that he would not aim at President Chen first,” he pointed out, adding: “the prosecutor certainly had no reasonable ground to conclude that he made an assassination attempt.”

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