Knowing how venal and lascivious he is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been offered a luxury villa in the location of his choice across the water, together with a fat pension for life and half a dozen nubile “maids” and “nurses” to serve him à la Mao Zedong, if he can pull off deposing Chen or at least inflict some substantial damage on Taiwan’s democratic system and social stability. The deal would have been brokered by the likes of his buddy the fugitive criminal Chen Yu-hao or any PFP legislator.
But while he may well be expecting his twenty pieces of gold for a job well done, I reckon the main motivation for his extraordinary betrayal of Taiwan is sheer egotism. As I wrote elsewhere:
[quote=“Omniloquacious”]Having gained the chairmanship of the DPP on the strength of his 25-year incarceration but almost nothing else, SMT’s failings as a leader, politician and person were glaringly exposed. His stardom quickly began to wane, and before very long he was out on his ear and had been replaced by other far more capable and honorable people in the party. Thereafter, his political fortunes continued to plunge, culminating in his humiliating defeats in the 2002 Kaohsiung mayoral election (where he received a mere 8,000 votes, just 1% of all votes cast), and in Taipei in the 2004 legislative elections (i.e., crushingly rejected by the electorate in both the south and north of Taiwan).
Consumed with bitterness, be became a forlorn figure on the outskirts of politics, cashing in as best he could on the 25-years-in-prison-for-democracy tag, but otherwise largely treated with disdain by the political establishment. His huge ego was deeply lacerated, and his envious rage was stoked to ever greater intensity as Chen and other DPP leaders flaunted the power that he believed could and should have been his. Hell hath no fury like that of a third-rate egomaniac politician who slides down the slippery pole as others successfully take all the limelight and power at the top.
So there was SMT, an abject failure and largely a figure of ridicule, living on handouts from assorted criminals (thank you very much for that luxurious home) and politicos of various hues that threw him a few bones on the offchance that he might still be of use to them some day. And then his big chance came along, a chance to put himself back in the public spotlight and have the immense satisfaction of rallying mob hatred and assault against the man whose success so painfully magnifies his own unbearable nonentity.
Being the kind of person he is, how could he not have seized this opportunity with both hands, even though it has involved the most contemptible betrayal of the noble people who put their own lives on the line to help him in the darkest days of his past, and has necesitated his bedding down with the very people who imprisoned him and would have killed him if they could have got away with it. Every last pretence at having any honour or integrity abandoned, this washed-out has-been is enjoying his last hurrah at the center of attention and now will be able to go to his grave with a smirk on his revoltingly degenerate face.[/quote]