Forgiveness, repentance and progress for the New Year

Before making New Year's wishes, we should thank God or Heaven for our luck not to have any elections in the Year of the Serpent. In a democracy, elections are inevitable, like paying taxes, but we don't like the divisive elections we used to have that hurt our communal harmony. We are happy we don't have to pray for sparing us such elections this time around.

To help Taiwan repair the half-broken communal harmony, we wish President Ma Ying-jeou would give our impenitent former President Chen Shui-bian a pardon, if possible, or a respite from behind the bars. Mr. Chen, who is doing time for corruption and graft, serves himself right, of course. But he is ill, though maybe not so ill as he presents himself to be. He had better be given a chance to have a family reunion like everybody else, come the next Year of the Horse. Ma doesn't want to pardon Chen until the court of law settles all the cases involving the ex-head of state. But it takes too much time. We wish Mr. Ma, whose family name means the horse, would let Mr. Chen reunite with his family in the Year of the Horse. On one condition, however. Mr. Chen has to repent.

So, let us wish Mr. Chen would emulate the Wudi Emperor of the Han Dynasty who ruled China from 140 to 86 B.C. The emperor taxed the people so heavily to finance the military expansion of his empire that the dynasty began to decline. So Wudi issued the first imperial rescript for penitence (罪己詔) in Chinese history. But the emperor did not actually blame himself. He blamed his army. Nor did he confess the mistakes he made during his long rule to expand the empire. Mr. Chen could write a rescript for penitence a la Wudi to apologize for the corruption and graft and so win a pardon.

For humanitarian reasons, too, we wish the Ministry of Defense would let Justin Lin, a Taiwanese-born deserter captain who defected to China and later became a vice president of the World Bank, come home for a reunion visit in the Year of the Serpent. He has been wanted for treason because he swam across a narrow strip of water from Quemoy to Amoy for defection in 1979. All our top brass should do to let him return to his hometown of Yilan is not to toil or delay a limitation period of the statute of limitations. A limitation period begins running upon accrual of action, which is subject to interpretation by judges. If not toiled, the limitation period for Lin's treason has long run out.

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