Taiwan's jailed former president Chen Shui-bian used a publicly broadcast eulogy he made at a family prayer service for his late mother-in-law yesterday to again claim he had been politically persecuted.
In a widely watched appearance in the southern city of Tainan, Chen crawled into the mourning hall of a funeral parlour where a shrine to his mother-in-law, who died last week, was erected.
'Please forgive me for not being filial by not seeing you at the hospital before you passed away,' Chen said. In his 18-minute address, Chen said his imprisonment was politically motivated and that he was not corrupt.
'When I was president in 2000, [my daughter Wu Shu-jen] asked me to cut in half my [monthly] salary, from NT$800,000 (HK$210,000), because of the financial difficulty in Taiwan at that time,' he said.
Chen added that the family had never done anything wrong to the Taiwanese people and instead had notable achievements, including important construction projects like the high-speed railway, the Snow Mountain tunnel and Taipei 101, one of the world's tallest buildings.
He believed that over time the 'court of conscience' of the people would uphold justice to release him from the 'cross of Taiwan', which he was bearing.