Doubts over Ma's tough cure for corruption
By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - Although the Taiwanese are hardly strangers to news of corrupt
officials, the headlines of the past few weeks must have come as a surprise. So
many judicial officials are under investigation that it's hard to not lose
track of allegations of bribery, visits to prostitutes during office hours and
judges brazenly acquitting one another's offspring.
Under public pressure, President Ma Ying-jeou, together with a zealous
prosecutor general, has talked tough on the matter and vowed not to allow a few
corrupt officials tarnish the reputation of the public sector and the
government. Yet, unlike in the past, when Taiwan looked to democratic Japan and
Western countries for inspirational guidance to judicial reform, Taiwan's
leaders are
increasingly citing one-party-ruled Singapore and semi-democratic Hong Kong as
role models for a corruption-free judiciary.
In the eyes of Taiwanese politicians, Singapore's and Hong Kong's achievements
in eradicating bribery are to be credited to powerful anti-corruption
commissions. In line with this assessment, Taiwan's government now wants to
follow suit and create something similar. However, it is unclear if these
models of tight control would work in Taiwan.
"It was the British Empire that influenced Hong Kong's and Singapore's judicial
systems, but it's Chinese culture that influences Taiwan's," Yao Li-ming, a
political commentator and former Kuomintang (KMT) lawmaker, said in an
interview with Asia Times Online. "In Taiwan, personal relationships are still
too much regarded as being something of utmost importance. This makes it easier
for judges to take bribes."
Although the features of Taiwan's society Yao refers to are hard to see for
outsiders, no Taiwanese will deny their existence. Before major surgery, a
patient's relatives are expected to find a way to hand over a red envelope
filled with banknotes to the physician in charge. It is an unspoken law that
newly hired public school teachers discretely present red envelopes to
principals, just as low-ranking military personnel do to higher ranks.
In the days before civil law suits were fought, defendants and accusers alike
were in many cases anonymously informed that judges as well as prosecutors
appreciated that kind of red envelope. Numerous proverbs describe the practice,
and one of the most chilling is, "With money sentenced to live, without money
sentenced to die."
Generally, both Taiwan's general public and the authorities are indifferent to
such corruption.
However, the current scandals involving the very people who are supposed to
safeguard the rule of law are testing the limits of public tolerance. In recent
surveys, more than 70% of respondents claimed the scandals - which the media
have called the biggest-ever in Taiwan's judiciary - have profoundly shaken
their confidence in the judicial system.
They began in mid-July when a newly established "self-policing" unit of the
judiciary, the Special Investigation Division (SID), delivered its first
result: the uncovering of a corruption scandal involving three high court
judges and a prosecutor. The four were accused of taking bribes from a former
KMT lawmaker and ex-county chief, Her Jyh-huei, in exchange for the overturning
of a verdict by a district court that had sentenced Her to a 19-year jail term
on bribery charges.
That was followed by the resignation of the president of the Judicial Yuan,
Taiwan's highest judicial organ. Days later, a former actress who was working
as a prison counselor claimed that one of the detained high court judges had
sought to extort US$100,000 from a defendant in a murder case, again shocking
the nation.
According to the counselor, the man wasn't able to pay and was subsequently
sentenced to death, in a possible example of the above-mentioned proverb coming
true.
Soon, three more judges were under investigation over allegations that they
conspired to acquit the son of a supreme court judge in a trial following a
hit-and-run accident. One of the judges involved was also alleged to have in
the past wrongfully let go a colleague accused in a bribery case who is now on
the run in China.
While Ma's government scrambles to reduce the political damage, Taiwanese media
have focused on the juicier aspects of the bribery cases, such as monitored
cell-phone calls by high court judge Yang Ping-chen, one of the men under
investigation. It was revealed that Yang, who reportedly handled fewer cases
than his colleagues due to his bad health, regularly visited prostitutes and
met mistresses in restaurants and hotels during office hours. Taiwan's public
is left to guess how Yang maintained his lifestyle on a judge's salary.
The SID is led by state public prosecutor general Huang Shih-ming. He took the
position following the impeachment of his predecessor, Chen Tsung-ming, who was
forced out of office for dereliction of duty. It was also alleged that he was
too soft in handling the corruption and money-laundering cases of former
president Chen Shui-bian. Chen is currently appealing a 20-year jail sentence
for corruption that he was handed in 2009.
Huang uses harsh words that make him sound more like a politician than a
judicial official, calling for a cleansing of the judiciary through merciless
crackdowns. To soothe public outrage, Ma, a self-declared admirer of Singapore
for its toughness on corruption, has called for the establishment of an
anti-corruption unit to serve as the "judicial police with the right to search,
seize and detain".
Initially, the unit would employ about 200 people with the ultimate goal of
lowering the crime rate and increasing the conviction rate, Ma said. Using Hong
Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and Singapore's Corrupt
Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) as models, it is hoped the
anti-corruption agency will become a powerful tool.
However, Ma stressed that there would be one major difference between Taiwan's
commission and its Hong Kong and Singapore counterparts; unlike the ICAC and
the CPIB, the agency will not be established under the prime minister or the
president; it will be controlled by the island's Ministry of Justice.
Hong Kong and Singapore, which like Taiwan are dominated by ethnic Chinese, are
frequently named Asia's least corrupt places. Transparency International's 2009
corruption index ranks Hong Kong (12) and Singapore (3), among the 180 states
and territories it surveys, easily overtaking Asia's well-off democracies Japan
(18), Korea (40) and Taiwan (37).
Both Hong Kong and Singapore were ruled by Britain, and it was the former
colonial power that set up Hong Kong's ICAC and Singapore's CPIB. The objective
of the foreign governors was to clean up endemic corruption since the local
police forces couldn't be trusted.
Thus, Hong Kong's and Singapore's anti-corruption bodies reported directly to
the British governors rather than to the respective Justice ministries.
After Singapore gained independence from Britain in the 1950s, the CPIB was
taken over by the new rulers of the city-state, and following the transfer of
sovereignty in 1997, the State Council of the People's Republic of China took
charge of appointing the head of Hong Kong's ICAC.
The ICAC as well as the CPIB are known for their heavy-handed investigation
methods. Singapore's unit has the right to detain suspects without trail and to
investigate not only the suspect but also relatives or agents. Financial and
other records of family members can be examined, and the CPIB even has the
power to independently investigate any other offense that is uncovered in the
course of a corruption investigation.
Hong Kong's and Singapore's anti-corruption commissions have earned the respect
of ordinary people and are frequently glorified in movies and television
series. They are widely admired for their ability to hold high-ranking
officials accountable. This is all the more important since, unlike in
democracies, neither in Hong Kong nor in Singapore do corrupt officials or
their superiors risk being punished at the ballot booth.
In Taiwan's political landscape, it is not only opponents of the KMT that doubt
whether an anti-corruption commission as envisioned by Ma would be good for
Taiwan. The KMT-leaning English-language daily, The China Post, carried an
editorial that surprisingly criticized Ma's plan.
Intriguingly, it didn't question whether such a powerful organ could be abused
by leaders; instead it implied that Taiwan's democratic system and hesitant
approach to authoritarian measures would render an anti-corruption commission a
toothless tiger. The editorial argued that the reason for the success of the
ICAC and the CPIB was a trust and authority-building "fear factor" that
couldn't possibly work in Taiwan as every government body is subject to
monitoring by the legislature.
As a jab at Taiwan's democratic system and its infamous scenes of brawls
between rival lawmakers on the legislative floor, according to the editorial,
the "perennial bickering and partisanship in Taiwan's populist politics" would
hinder any effective action against corrupt members of the judiciary.
So are Taiwanese gradually losing faith in the island's ability to counter
corruption with the democratic institutions already at hand? And do they long
for a Singapore-style iron fist that catches corrupt civil servants?
Professor Yao needs a second to grasp these questions. His cell phone rings,
interrupting the interview. When he hangs up, he laughs, "Absolute nonsense!
News of a handful of corrupt judges won't destroy Taiwan's democracy." And in
an upbeat tone he adds: "The recent scandals shouldn't be taken too seriously
anyway, because the new generation of Taiwanese judges is much better than the
last one."
Jens Kastner is a Taipei-based writer.
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