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Transparency defends
graft survey
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff Reporter
Questioned by the government over the credibility of its latest survey on the
public¡¦s perception of corruption in public institutions, Transparency
International said it is confident in the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB)
released on Tuesday.
¡§We have full confidence in the results of the GCB survey, including those for
Taiwan,¡¨ Transparency International Secretariat research director Finn Heinrich
said in an e-mail reply to an inquiry from the Taipei Times on Friday night.
¡§As is standard practice, the GCB survey data underwent a series of internal and
external validity checks, including verification by an independent survey
methodology expert,¡¨ Heinrich added.
Heinrich was replying to a question on how Transparency International would
respond to Taiwan¡¦s protest letter against a finding of the survey that
suggested 36 percent of respondents in Taiwan said they had bribed contacts
within the public sector.
The letter addressed to the Berlin-based organization¡¦s managing director, Cobus
de Swardt, was delivered by the nation¡¦s representative office in Germany on
Thursday.
The state-owned Central News Agency (CNA) had what it said was a ¡§full text¡¨ of
the letter in a report from Berlin early on Friday, showing it was a strongly
worded protest.
Regarding the ¡§unfair evaluation¡¨ of Taiwan in this year¡¦s GCB survey, ¡§we
desire to protest in the strongest possible way,¡¨ the CNA report said.
One of the reasons for the discrepancy between the survey and a survey conducted
by an independent institution in Taiwan last year ¡X which found that 0.8 percent
of respondents said they had paid a bribe, 2.5 percent said they had only heard
of things like that happening and 96.6 percent said they never paid a bribe ¡X
was that the methodology used in the survey was ¡§not scientific enough,¡¨ CNA
reported.
Transparency International, a civil society organization with 90 chapters
worldwide that was founded in Berlin in 1993 to expose corruption, releases its
GCB survey annually to assess people¡¦s direct experiences with bribery and
detail their views on corruption in the main institutions in their countries.
According to the organization, the report this year draws on a survey of more
than 114,000 respondents in 107 countries, with the survey questionnaire
translated into local languages and used for face-to-face, computer-assisted
telephone interviewing or online interviews depending on the country context.
The government said in its protest letter that the survey result was
¡§subjective¡¨ and ¡§arbitrary¡¨ and ¡§not a subjective comparison¡¨ of corruption in
the 107 countries because the countries were surveyed by different polling
institutions that employed different survey methods, the CNA report said.
¡§Taiwan is a country governed by rule of law. This is so unfair that Taiwan was
placed in the same tier as most-corrupt countries. We demanded that you review
the process whereby the survey was conducted and correct the ridiculous survey
result about our country,¡¨ the CNA report quoted the letter as saying.
According to the GCB survey, countries with a bribery rate of 36 percent
included Bolivia, Egypt and Indonesia, in addition to Taiwan.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Anna Kao (°ª¦w) would not confirm the CNA
report, saying only that the protest letter was written in German.
The survey on Taiwan was conducted by the Cass Research Centre, WIN/Gallup
International Association¡¦s China-based partner, using an online method, rather
than Shanghai-based WisdomAsia undertaking the survey by telephone as stated in
the GCB report, Heinrich confirmed in the e-mail reply.
Heinrich said that the mistake was ¡§a result of miscommunication¡¨ between
Transparency International Secretariat and WIN/Gallup International Association,
which Transparency International works with on the global survey.
¡§We regret this error and will issue a correction in the online version of the
Global Corruption Barometer report as soon as possible,¡¨ Heinrich said.
Asked why Transparency International did not have the survey on Taiwan
implemented by a Taiwan-based polling company, Heinrich said WIN/Gallup
International Association contracted its China-based partner CRC to carry out
the survey because it does not have a local partner in Taiwan.
Particularly for online surveys, ¡§this is common practice¡¨ and has been done by
WIN/Gallup International Association for other surveys as well, including the
Global Corruption Barometer 2010, Heinrich said.
The Global Corruption Barometer 2010 found that 7 percent of people in Taiwan
who had used any of eight government services ¡X police, judiciary, registry,
land, medical, education, tax and utilities ¡X over the past 12 months had paid a
bribe.
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