By Chris Wang and Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporters
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday threw his support behind former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) lawsuit against government officials over corruption allegations in the run-up to the presidential election and demanded President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) apologize for his involvement in what he called a smear campaign.
Speaking on the sidelines of a youth forum at the DPP national headquarters, Su said he supported Tsai’s legal actions and hoped the judiciary would investigate and rule on the case as soon as possible.
Tsai was cleared last week of any wrongdoing in the case, in which she was accused of pressing the state-owned National Development Fund to invest in Yu Chang Biologics Co (宇昌生技股份有限公司), now known as TaiMed Biologics Inc (中裕新藥股份有限公司), when she was vice premier.
Tsai filed a lawsuit against Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and former Council of Economic Planning and Development minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) on Monday over the pair’s allegations in the run-up to the Jan. 14 presidential election that Tsai had played an improper role in the formation of the biotechnology company.
Su accused Ma, who enjoys presidential immunity from prosecution, of ordering his running-mate, Wu, who was premier at the time, to launch administrative investigations against Tsai with incorrect information and outrageous statistics cited by certain ministerial officials.
The judiciary and prosecutors were also brought in to investigate Tsai during the campaign, while all the lawsuits filed by the DPP against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Ma’s re-election campaign were dismissed, Su added.
“Those who used smear tactics were not held accountable, while the law failed to serve justice to the victims,” Su said. “That is why the party supports Tsai’s lawsuit and demands Ma acknowledge his mistakes and apologize. We also hope the judiciary takes the shortest possible amount of time to complete the legal proceedings of this case.”
The DPP’s Central Standing Committee reached a resolution last week to establish a working group under the party’s Policy Research Committee to gather and analyze information on all legal cases and prosecutions involving DPP members, including Tsai and former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), in an effort to “reverse the miscarriage of justice.”
In response, KMT spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) said Su was the one who should apologize, for making groundless accusations against and smearing Ma Ying-jeou, who doubles as KMT chairman.
Meanwhile, KMT Policy Committee chief Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) accused Tsai of manipulating the judicial system for political purposes.
“The KMT respected the judicial decision that cleared Tsai’s name and we hope the DPP and Tsai do not apply a double-standard policy concerning judicial verdicts,” Lin said.
Tsai should “stop before going too far” and refrain from wasting public resources on the case, Lin said.
“How could they say on the one hand that Tsai was proved innocent, while on the other hand, they were dissatisfied with the dismissal of the lawsuits against Wu and Liu,” Lin said.
Additional reporting by staff writer