The National Development Conference of December 1996 was called in the wake of the completion of the first round of Taiwan's reforms -- with the holding of the presidential election in March of that year -- to hammer out policy for the next round. To quote the official record, "a total of 170 representatives, including members of political parties, elected representatives, government officials, scholars, experts, and community leaders," did just that. Three years later we wonder not whether the plan is still on track, but whether anyone even remembers what was in it.
This reflection on Taiwan's political dystopia is caused by the legislature's passage on Tuesday of a bill to raise the salaries of low-level elected representatives by as much as 200 percent. There is also a significant change in status for many of the recipients of this taxpayers' largesse. Borough and village wardens and neighborhood chiefs have until now been regarded as being part-time jobs, outside of the government system, for which those who performed them received a stipend. Now they are to be regarded as salaried government jobs. So basically, these grassroots representatives, whose main function is to knock on doors and get out the vote at election time, have had a massive increase in pay as well as a serious upgrading in the status of their job.
But aren't these the very jobs that the National Development Conference set out to abolish? Reading through the conference resolutions we found the following: "Elections for rural township, urban township and township-level municipality offices should be suspended, and the heads of these townships and municipalities should be appointed in accordance with the law." As far as we understand this, it means that elections to all posts below the county level were to be abolished and the positions were to be filled by appointed officials.
The reason for this measure was, of course, that township-level administrations are the stuff of which Taiwan's "black gold" politics is made -- the venues in which the local strongmen get themselves or a hanger-on elected and then proceed to run the municipalities as personal fiefs for their own enrichment, commanding patronage in the shape of government funds to hand out and political power that can be used to legitimize -- or at least de facto decriminalize -- their shadier businesses.
The conference resolution aimed to sever the connection between municipal administrations and the local factions or gangs by digging up the road they took into power (though it never addresses how local administrators appointed from outside were to avoid either being intimidated or bribed into letting the old regime continue).
But now, apparently, not only are these posts not to be abolished, but they are to be better paid and have increased stature.
Perhaps pointing out that the reformist zeal of the National Development Conference has dissipated is old news. Actually, the government seems to have abandoned any attempt at tackling Taiwan's endemic corruption after the shock of the county chief elections in December 1997, when the DPP swiped a majority of seats from the KMT, leading to the appointment of the recently disgraced John Chang (
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