On July 2, following four years of legal wrangling, two cases in which former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and others were accused of embezzling special allowance funds ended with not-guilty verdicts, and prosecutors decided not to appeal. On Wednesday, Lu petitioned the Control Yuan to investigate whether the prosecutors who brought the case against her had abused their authority.
The conviction rate for corruption cases in Taiwan has for a long time hovered around 60 percent. Even setting aside the question of whether prosecutors treat cases differently according to political affiliations, the low conviction rate is hard to accept.