A scandal simmers at Sogo
Another story that seems to be escaping the eye of the English media is the still-developing 太平洋 Sogo scandal. Sogo was once the Taiwan equivalent of Harrods, but has fallen on hard times recently. Sogo’s previous owner, 章民強 Zhang Min-qiang once supported current ROC President 陳水扁Chen Shui-Bian, but later publicly stated that he did so with the hope that Chen would extend his credit and allow him to keep his store.
According to Zhang, Chen’s deputy 陳哲男 Chen Che-nan took the money and did nothing, allowing the department store to be sold to the 遠通 Far Eastern Group, the company that’s been making such a fine mess of the ETC toll-collection system. Conveniently, or appropriately, Far Eastern selected a former Chen-appointed Government Information Office (GIO) head, 鍾琴 Chung Chin, as the new chairwoman of Sogo, despite the fact that she had no business experience whatsoever. Shockingly, Sogo’s fortunes haven’t been reversed by Chung since her appointment.
In a nutshell, KMT Legislator 李全教 Lee Chuan-chiao, who has been pushing hard on the 陳哲男 Chen Che-nan scandal, has accused the president’s wife, 吳淑珍 Wu Shu-chen, of accepting NT$8.8 million in gift certificates from Sogo. The certificates would be hard to trace and a nice way to quietly move money around. Some just receipts have surfaced, and the story is still developing. There are some Chinese-language links here, here, and here.
The only English link I’ve managed to find is at TCMnet. Despite the lack of Engish-language stories on the scandal, the president’s office has already denied the charges in English and threatened to sue.
posted by Taiwan's Other Side at 11:20 PM
13 Comments:
TOS, what are you talking about? The Taipei Times reported on this the other day.
Like all of thise nonsense, there's no evidence for any of this, just accusations. It will disappear like vapor when the next KMT invention comes along, to be repeated breathlessly -- with allusions to nonexistent nonreporting -- by the duped and those incapable of critical thought.
Michael
I agree that the KMT can put out some misleading rumors masquerading as fact. HOWEVER, they are nowhere near as capable as the DPP and their political propaganda tract called the Taipei Times/Liberty Times.
The fact that most Westerners can read the Taipei Times with a straight face belies their sincere myopic prejudices. At least the China Post, with its still stone-age graphics and occasional grammar errors, manage to keep their editorials in their EDITORIAL section, rather than TT's plastering over the News.
Michael,
Not to question your impartiality to all this 'nonsense', but I'd appreciate the link.
We can ignore Joshua's comments. He basically likes the KMT because he dislikes the CCP and wants to use the KMT as an alternative to the CCP. Dream on. When Taiwan is free and people talk about things honestly like throwing away "one-China", stop upholding the KMT as some kind of paragon of virtue, then we can talk about what kind of relationship Taiwan wants to have with China (EU style single economic zone? Full unification?) and then there will be real influence of Taiwan on China.
I have no doubt that there is a lot of corruption among the DPP in the executive branch as there is among KMT legislators and DDP legislators. But what is discussed in the news, the people that are throwing around accusations without evidence, the people being either rabble rousers or corrupt themselves... what needs to happen is the Control Yuan needs to be put back in business. KMT legislators don't want a functioning investigative branch because they'd get investigated too.
Bottom line--Taiwan's people get to decide, whether independence or unification.
At least I'm not called a commie-lover. hehe...
Seriously, I have no particular love for the KMT, it's just that the DPP since 2000 (I supported Chen's mayoral election in 98) and the concept of bentuhua has been disingenuous.
I think if you read carefully I don't deny my own biases (everyone has them; those that feign perfect objectivity are the worst liars), but I just like to see facts and truths as they are, not how they are fabricated.
I think anyone who starts 'we can dismiss everything this guy says' ad hominems as the least capable of defending their arguments. (note the difference between attacking your logic versus dismissing all arguments with a brushstroke)
TOS, you posted this on the 11th. On the tenth, the Taipei Times had noted that a slander lawsuit would be filed
TT 4/10
and the story appeared on the 9th as well.
TT 4/9
Do I need more? I mean, every time you mutter darkly about how the Anglais media is ignoring the story, the reality is rather different. At least run a check at TT first!
Michael
michael,
Of course I ran a search before posting. That's why I wanted the link-to see what the keywords were that I had missed. I came up with zilch when I did mine.
and i'm sure that you're not implying that the deep-green Taipei Times, or the sad China Post do a fantastic job showing all points of view. If that were the case, I never would have bothered starting this blog.
I don't think it's true to say that the Taipei Times never reports on potentially damaging information on the DPP. However, one should look at how the TT skews the news, either favorably (for DPP) or unfavorably (for KMT or PRC).
One common trait is to use unrelated but biased quotes from partisan sources. Another habit is to directly attempt opinionated rebuttals or even outright omission of KMT responses.
As a J-school graduate with experience in reporting, I'm pretty sensitive to this. I noticed that The China Post generally gives DPP responses without any overt opinionated rebuttals.
In the future, examine the non-political stories from Taiwan. (everyday fires, suicides, etc.) See how each paper reports on the story. Do they try to skew some anti-DPP or -KMT/PRC angle? I find the Taipei Times most guilty of this practice.
I want to emphasize again: I'm only referring to problems in the NEWS section, not editorials.
The problem is when reporters editorialize in the NEWS section.
I can't repeat this enough. I think it's great to express any opinion in the Editorial section, but distressing in the NEWS section.
Wait a second, you've got to be kidding. The English language China Post is atrocious. They use tons of biased language, plus it looks like they were spotted recently for stealing other newspapers' articles and translating them into poor English...
KMT and CCP are the same to me. Their job is to create a strong China at the expense of Taiwan.
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