After much lobbying, the political donations law (政治獻金法) finally passed an initial review by the Home and Nations Committee on Dec. 31. Recently, the legislature's cross-party task force, which has been promoting "sunshine laws," said the Legislative Yuan will pass the donations bill before the recess. This bill, together with the political party law (政黨法), currently under review, and the recently drafted lobby law (遊說法), has acquired a particular significance in the wake of the Zanadau corruption scandal and the Kaohsiung City Council vote-buying case.
Momentum for implementation of the "sunshine laws" picked up with the passage of the Public Functionary Assets Disclosure Law (
The laws have not served well primarily because they are inherently flawed and partly because they have been badly enforced. They simply do not give the authorities the powers they need to conduct comprehensive investigations. Many of the articles prescribe light penalties and therefore have no deterrent effect, while others are merely "moral declarations" and carry no penalty at all. Some articles are poorly defined, providing loopholes that can be used to evade the law. Whether the other sunshine laws will avoid these kinds of defects will depend on the wisdom and the consciences of the legislators.
The political donations law, for example, which is about to enter the process of negotiation between the party caucuses, needs further discussion and clarification.
First, the original bill proposed by the Executive Yuan adopted the concept of "persons planning to run in an election" for the first time. The bill allowed people planning to run in presidential elections to set up designated accounts to receive political donations one year before the election. No ceiling was set on the donation amounts. People planning to run for legislative, county commissioner or mayoral elections can set up such accounts up to eight months in advance. Not to set ceilings for donations certainly avoids the problem of being "impractical," but appears to contradict the provisions of the current Election and Recall Law (選罷法).
Besides, if a person planning to run in elections is deemed unqualified to do so by the election commission at the time of official registration, or if the candidate drops out of the campaign for personal reasons or pressure from their parties, then what should be done with the political donations that that candidate received? The provisions concerning campaign funding in the Election and Recall Law need to be amended to address this problem.
In the initial committee review on Dec. 30, legislators from both the ruling and opposition parties added a provision saying that elected public representatives could accept political donations at any time. Of course, everyone knows that many politicians take political donations outside of "election campaign periods" or "periods in which [the person in question] is planning to run in an election." The addition of that provision therefore was simply a recognition of reality.
The important question, however, is why anyone would want to receive political donations outside of campaign periods. Is there any ceiling on the total amount of such donations? How should they be audited? How should we ensure that the individual or corporate donors and the public representatives avoid conflicts of interest? Or is it simply a matter of legalizing such horse-trading?
Next, the draft bill clearly prohibits foreign political donations, but this point has long been stipulated in Article 45, Paragraph 2, and Article 88 of the Election and Recall Law. Despite these provisions, there have always been many candidates raising funds from expatriates and overseas Chinese in past elections. Were all these donors ROC citizens? Has any candidate been sentenced to the maximum five years in prison for the offense?
Still, the draft bill contains no regulations on so-called "soft money." (The US Congress has already enacted legislation to prohibit this.) In other words, politicians can still openly accept political donations in different forms via "support groups," "volunteer organizations" and "foundations" -- either during or outside of election campaign periods -- without monitoring.
Finally, in line with the Election and Recall Law, the political donations law still encourages political donations by providing tax-deductible amounts on both individual and corporate donations. Past experience tells us that this is simply unrealistic. How can any individual or company donate large sums of money to candidates merely for the tax deductions? Without heavy penalties (for both donors and recipients), there is simply no way to stop rampant money politics.
Taiwan is eager to get rid of corrupt "black gold" politics, and it is both necessary and praiseworthy to push for a series of sunshine laws. I hope the legislators will truly bring themselves to cherish what they profess to cherish instead of just pretending. I hope they will truly eliminate "black gold" politics from Taiwan, push for clean politics and establish new standards when they review the political donations bill.
Wang Yeh-lih is a professor of political science at Tunghai University.
Translated by Francis Huang
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