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Editorial: Gangsters make their mark

That yesterday's scuffle in the legislature came in the wake of an "anti-black gold promise" made by KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰) is wonderfully ironic. But while such fistfights are broadcast live and repeated in every news bulletin to the amusement and entertainment of a wide audience, they make Taiwan's legislature an international laughing stock.

More interestingly, such punch-ups have been going on for so long -- over a decade -- that people tend to overlook the fact that there has been a significant change in who is doing what and to whom.

In the past, opposition lawmakers used filibustering and sometimes violence as a tactic in their struggle for reform. A choreographed roughhouse or two served a dual purpose. First, it threatened to make the legislature unworkable, partly through stopping business in its tracks and partly by simply scaring away the geriatrics last elected in China in 1948 who, before 1992, made up the vast majority of a highly unrepresentative chamber. Second, at a time when the media was totally in the government's pocket, mayhem in the legislature was a way of getting publicity for the goals the opposition reformers were fighting for -- such as representative political institutions.

That was then. What we saw yesterday, for all its prima facie similarity, was something quite different. The brawling is now carried out by lawmakers with organized crime backgrounds as nothing more than intimidation of other elected representatives. Sometimes it has gone further. In one outrageous example a few years ago, thugs even pulled one legislator -- who had accused legislator Lo Fu-chu (羅福助) of being a gangster -- out of bed and locked him up in a roadside dog kennel to give him a "chilling."

What seems remarkable to outsiders is that these thuggish lawmakers with gangster backgrounds remain in the legislature, getting elected time and time again. They are neither punished by their political parties nor effectively stopped by media criticism. That one of them has even served as the convener of the legislature's Judicial Affairs Committee is a major blow to the credibility of Taiwan law.

How did this happen? In the process of Taiwan's democratization, many people with organized crime backgrounds "bleached" themselves in elections and became politicians. According to statistics, two-thirds of gangs in Taiwan have lawmakers running on their behalf in the legislature, while one-quarter of elected public representatives have criminal records. These facts are a shame to Taiwan's democracy.

Japan and Italy also have their problems with organized crime syndicates, but the Yakuza and Mafia seldom get directly involved in politics. They can only buy off politicians through the back door. They dare not openly run in elections.

But Taiwan's mobsters can openly go into politics and apparently act with impunity. They get elected because of the deficiencies in Taiwan's voting system, and they are invulnerable because as the KMT's legislative majorities have slowly declined the ruling party needs the support of independent lawmakers -- including those with organized crime backgrounds -- to pass its legislative agenda.

As a result, the malignant tumor of "black gold" politics continues to grow.

President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) should take much of the responsibility for today's rampant black gold politics. Lee used grassroots factions, especially in rural areas, to oust the KMT's old guard. But these are the very elements most closely connected to organized crime. It is absurd to sing the praises of Taiwan's democratization while it allows such people to sit in the legislature. That Lee has not been able to successfully tackle this problem is a big minus in his democratization efforts. It is also a major challenge to his chosen heir, Lien Chan.

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