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EDITORIAL: The KMT
needs to clean up its act
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) needs to stop apologizing for the corruption
scandals involving close aides and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians.
He should also stop talking about how shocked and saddened he was to learn about
the bribery allegations against them. We’ve heard it all before.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Lai Su-ju (賴素如) allegedly accepted NT$1 million
(US$33,490) in bribes from the developer of Taipei Twin Towers project — a
scandal that erupted just months after a corruption scandal involving former
Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世). Both occured on Ma’s watch,
and, as he said in an apology on Thursday regarding the Lai scandal, he should
take full responsibility for KMT members’ acts of corruption.
Both Lin and Lai were trusted aides as a top official of the Executive Yuan and
director of Ma’s chairman’s office respectively. The KMT had promoted them as
fresh faces and young hopefuls under Ma’s chairmanship.
Their fall from grace have highlighted the problem of the KMT’s power structure.
Under the party-state mechanism, Ma holds absolute power and only takes advice
from a small circle of aides.
His reluctance to be more engaged in grassroots politics and to have a deeper
understanding of the party’s local factions has made it easier for politicians
like Lin and Lai to abuse their power and allegedly pocket bribes.
Ma has pledged to speed up party reform and eliminate the so-called “black gold”
or vote-buying culture in the KMT since his first stint as party chairman in
2005. His promise once gave the public high hopes that the 100-year-old party
could be cleaned up.
Now his aides alleged involvement in bribery scandals has destroyed the public’s
confidence in the integrity of the Ma administration.
While the KMT scrambles to deal with the crises, Ma is still planning to run for
re-election as KMT chairman in July, despite growing challenges from party
members.
He has said that only by his doubling as KMT chairman can the administrative and
legislative branches work closely in implementing policies. However, despite
Ma’s chairmanship, the Cabinet still has trouble getting the KMT legisative
caucus to carry out government reforms and has failed to improve efficiency.
The problems of illicit party assets, black-gold politics and factional
infighting has also clouded the party over the years.
Cleaning up the party’s stolen assets and making the party “asset free” was a
major goal of Ma for improving the party’s image. Most of the problematic assets
have been handled, but the party is unable to sell the Central Investment
Holding Co, which is valued at more than NT$20 billion.
However, the KMT’s old practice of relying on vote-buying and influence peddling
among local factions continues to occur in elections.
Anti-corruption reform efforts in the KMT are a daunting task that require
collective and persistent efforts. Ma must expand his small circle of aides and
seek help from outside this pool of talent if he is to uphold party integrity.
Transforming the KMT into a clean party is not something he can accomplish
alone.
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