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TAIWAN'S former president, Chen Shui-bian, was sent to prison for life on Friday September 11th after being convicted of various crimes, including embezzlement of government funds, forgery and accepting bribes over a land deal. It is a harsh sentence for the 58-year-old who ruled Taiwan from 2000 to 2008 and who had a feisty reputation for promoting independence from China.

Officials suggest that the punishment, which includes a fine of NT$200m ($6.1m), needed to be severe because of damage inflicted on the country. Mr Chen's wife, Wu Shu-chen, was also given a life sentence for seven crimes relating to corruption and a fine of NT$300m. The court punished several others, including former aides and the president's son and daughter-in-law.

The young democracy is now divided between those who are celebrating the fact that even the most powerful are not immune from the legal process and those who see the prosecution, conviction and harsh sentencing of a former president as evidence that the courts are under the sway of politicians.

Mr Chen's supporters, naturally, claim the latter. His office issued a statement calling the verdict “unconstitutional, illegal and invalid” and claiming that Taiwan's justice system is unfair. He plans to appeal and his office wants his immediate release from prison. In the streets near the court his noisy supporters let off firecrackers and waved placards, also demanding his freedom. Lines of police stood guard by barbed-wire barricades.

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and foreign analysts point to irregularities in the judicial process. Mr Chen himself claims that corruption charges, which were first put to him three years ago, amount to persecution by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) that, he says, is attempting to appease China. Mr Chen upset the KMT by bringing to an end its half-century of rule in Taiwan and by tackling the government bureaucracy which was long accustomed to KMT influence. In his controversial years in office he also provoked China, stoking military tensions and talking of de jure independence for the island.

The KMT returned to government last year, led by President Ma Ying-jeou, whose spokesman now denies all charges of political interference in the trial. It is generally believed by the Taiwanese public, analysts say, that Mr Chen had been involved in some kind of wrongdoing, although there is also doubt that the former president has been treated fairly by the judiciary.

One problem is that Mr Chen has already been in jail for over nine months, allegedly to prevent him from collaborating with witnesses involved in the trial. Critics say this is a sign that the courts did not presume his innocence. A panel of judges which released him from prison briefly in December was mysteriously and secretively replaced with a new panel that ordered him back behind bars after criticism from KMT politicians. The same trio of judges presided over the trial.

“To me this is indicative that the legal system in Taiwan has been slow to democratise,” says Professor Bruce Jacobs, a Taiwan expert at Australia's Monash University. He suggests that whatever happened in this case, the judicial system had long been under the influence of the KMT and has been slow to reform. There is some doubt, too, that the embezzlement charges were appropriate.

The DPP is now in an awkward position. If it defends the former president fervently then voters may punish it for supporting a politician considered corrupt. On the other hand the party does not want to risk alienating Mr Chen's hardcore supporters. Thus the party produced a careful statement claiming that Taiwan's judicial system is flawed and supporting Mr Chen's appeal, but also saying that the ex-president should take responsibility for his actions, for example by remitting large sums of money kept by his family overseas.