Taipei (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Taiwanese Supreme Court has sentenced the island's former President Chen Shui-bian and wife to 19 years in prison for corruption. The ruling reduces by one year the couples sentence to 20 years prison, handed down last June.
However the question remains whether it is a politically motivated ruling: in fact, several analysts believe, the judges opinion was weighed by the fierce anti-Chinese campaign carried out by Chen during his two terms as president. The ruling, however, could get worse, as several other charges against the former presidential couple are still pending
Sentenced to life imprisonment on 11 September 2008 for the private use of public funds and trafficking of illicit money, five other corruption trials are ongoing against Chen. Detained since 30 December 2008, he insists he is the victim of a political plot orchestrated by Beijing, and carried out by President Ma Ying-jeou.
The court ruling could affect November 27local elections, which are wide-open compared to the 2012 presidential elections. Chen, in fact, is the only president of the Democratic Party to have ever ruled the island, and has always lead with a fierce opposition to any form of dialogue with Beijing.
His own struggle for independence at any cost, which the Nationalist Kuomintang Party abandoned years ago, assured him the hatred of mainland China, according to whom Taiwan – which split from the rest of the country in 1946, when Chiang Kai-shek Nationalists fled there after their defeat at the hands of Mao - is a "rebel province" to be re-conquered.