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Waiting for the
‘sunshine’ to come
By Chang Kuo-tsai
In the opening remarks of its briefing on the role of its department responsible
for ensuring public servants declare their property, the Control Yuan states
quite explicitly that the Act on Property-Declaration by Public Servants
(公職人員財產申報法), which was promulgated on July 2, 1993, and came into effect on
Sept. 1 that year, is to “promote clean government and proper ethical conduct in
government, to remove corruption from the public service and to provide citizens
with clean, transparent governance...” Inspiring stuff, but is it enough?
What this means is that, for the past 19 years, it has been a legal requirement
that public servants annually declare their finances to the Control Yuan, just
as it has been law for them to submit accounts which detail the campaign funds
and political donations they receive. The trouble is: How does one know if they
have been completely honest when making these declarations?
Former National Fire Agency director-general Huang Chi-min (黃季敏) retired in
September 2009. Before doing so, he submitted his finances to the Control Yuan
“in compliance with the law.” In his declaration, Huang said he had 3kg of gold
and savings amounting to over NT$36 million (US$1.22 million). Recently, his
office at Formosa Plastics Group — where he is now a vice general manager — was
raided as part of a corruption investigation and 16.5kg of gold bars were found.
A raid of his residence in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) uncovered many luxury
goods scatterd among clothes and hats. One report said that “in the entrance
alone there were 30 or 40 designer bags.”
Credit card records showed that over NT$10 million a year had been run up on the
card.
There is clearly a very big difference between the figures Huang submitted “in
compliance with the law” and the actual situation.
During the election campaign earlier this year, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) —
running against the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen
(蔡英文), unleashed all the resources at his command, including blanket advertising
and droves of campaigners on the ground.
The result? Ma and his vice-presidential running mate, Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), also
from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), submitted figures for political
donations to the Control Yuan saying they had received NT$446.4 million and had
spent NT$444.18 million. These figures compare with NT$756.71 million received
and NT$709.85 million spent by Tsai and her vice presidential candidate, Su
Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全).
Is this financial declaration system reliable? Is it effective? It does look
like the principle of discretionary evaluation of evidence is being severely
tested.
Meanwhile, the public are being taken for fools. That an incumbent candidate —
with access to tens of billions of dollars from illicit party assets — spends 40
percent less on an election campaign than the opposition candidate who relied on
small donations from supporters just does not make sense, nor does it tally with
experience or convention. It does not bear up to even the tiniest amount of
scrutiny. Just how much is the Control Yuan in control?
Do you still remember former minister of justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南), known for
his “Blue Sky” anti-pollution plan? Chen was all about fighting corruption and
cutting waste and contested the position of governor of Taiwan Province with
James Soong (宋楚瑜) in 1994.
Foolishly, he declared the actual amount of money spent on his campaign — around
NT$460 million — to the Control Yuan. Unfortunately, this meant he had exceeded
the legal limit on campaign expenses and was fined NT$400,000 by the Central
Election Commission.
His KMT-backed opponent Soong was far “smarter,” claiming the exact legally
permitted amount of NT$104,982,000. Not one dollar more, not one dollar less.
If you think that is impressive, then you will love this: When asked by a DPP
provincial councilor to account for his expenditure, Soong simply replied that
he had burnt all the records from that election.
In no way do I wish to take away from Soong’s achievements in this regard, but
he was still trumped by Ma. Even taking into account the value of the Taiwan
dollar, the prevailing market conditions, the cost of living, the sheer scale of
the respective campaigns and the number of voters compared between then and now,
Chen still managed to spend NT$15 million or NT$16 million more than Ma.
One should not cast aspersions or doubt the veracity of Ma’s claims that he is
completely genuine and would never seek to deceive the public. The public knows
this because Ma’s wife tells them so.
When “declaring finances in compliance with the law” becomes “telling bare-faced
lies in compliance with the law” or “trampling roughshod over the regulations in
compliance with the law,” one has to wonder whether we are better off not having
the law at all. If this is how civil servants and legislators are submitting
their finances to the Control Yuan, or how candidates are submitting their
campaign funds, and it is all in compliance with the law, then this is the
inescapable conclusion,
Is Ma serious about creating completely transparent, corruption-free, clean
politics? Surely, the simple way to go about this would be to scrap the kind of
legislation that encourages people to submit misleading or incorrect reports “in
compliance with the law” and to not only pass, but implement, the “sunshine”
laws that are supposed to address the problem of transparency of public
servants’ finances — and to do so as soon as possible. This would be the correct
way to go about it.
President Ma, KMT Chairman Ma, you make so much of your intention to fight
corruption and clean up politics. You have a majority in the legislature, you
are in charge of the KMT. What is it you are afraid of? What is it you are
waiting for? What is stopping you from passing these “sunshine” laws right now?
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor at National Hsinchu
University of Education.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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