This year, Taiwan made some progress in addressing the issue of political corruption with the passing of the Political Donation Law on March 19. Transparency International, an international non-governmental organization devoted to combating corruption, was one of the driving forces behind the law's adoption. The Taipei Times talked to the group's political corruption program manager in Taiwan, Diana Rodgriguez, and Liao Ran (廖燃), regional manager of the Asia-Pacific region, about how far Taiwan has come in making politicians accountable.
Taipei Times: One of the major focuses of this year's election has been the issue of political donations. Was this what brought you to Taiwan?
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Diana Rodgriguez: We are not here to monitor the election but to look at the particular issue of political finance. Taiwan is not unique in having a problem with political finance by any means; we look at the issue globally. Taiwan is interesting because it has introduced many changes that are aimed at addressing the issue of political corruption recently. It's a very interesting example to study, a very interesting context to be involved in at the moment, partly because so many of the changes are so recent. So many of the issues we look at at the global level are being debated right now. We were present at the debating of the political donations law at the legislative hearing. So we would just like to learn as much as we can about what's going on here.
TT: Could you talk about your roles in the Transparency International (TI)?
Rodgriguez: It is a global program. But we also look at the issue of political corruption everywhere in the world. TI has 100 chapters in different countries. The chapter effectively does most of its work in the areas of Latin America and Central Europe.
One of the things we monitor is the spending of political corruption. They monitor how much money the political parties are actually spending, whether the money they are spending correlates to the amount of money they say they are raising from donations. So this is a way in which our chapters and our organization like to function. My role in TI-Berlin is coordinating, to think about how transparency can develop, to try to help chapters and empower chapters to deal with their legislature and developing their countries.
Liao Ran: In TI, the management is divided into two forms: one is by region, one is by issue. So Diana is the issue manager for political corruption, and I am the program officer for the Asia-Pacific region, in charge of Asia and Chinese speaking areas, which means, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. In 2003, I conducted a global survey. In this survey all people recognized political corruption as the No. 1 problem. Second is public contracting. Third is judicial and law enforcement. Thus we decided to work on the theme of political corruption this year.
Rodgriguez: Last year we worked on access to information, because a lot of our chapters are saying that's one of the priorities they work on. Next year we are going to look at construction, because that's another issue that's a concern to people. We conducted public opinion surveys last year in terms of where the people's perception of corruption lies. In addition to this public opinion we also conducted a public survey of 100 organizations to make up the international Transparency Index. They told us that access to information, political corruption and public contracts have been the main problems, which is why so far the themes of the book have been on these topics.
TT: Would you highlight the parts in the Global Corruption Report that is relevant for Taiwan?
Rodgriguez: The issues we talk about are not specific to Taiwan; they are global, but there are some issues that are specifically relevant for Taiwan as we lead up to the release of the book [on March 25]. The evidence we do have on Taiwan comes from a survey that the World Economic Forum did for the Global Competitiveness Report. What they tried to assess was whether the donations to political parties were having an influence in the quality of decisions that the elected leaders were taking. This is one of the concerns we take into account when we look at political donations. One of the reasons we do so is because we want our elected leaders to be accountable to the electorate, not to the people who pay for their campaign. Three questions were asked to the business leaders: First question was, "How often do companies in your industry make undocumented payments to government officials, and was the purpose of those undocumented payments to influence policy making?"
And in Taiwan the score was 5.3 out of 7 and that placed Taiwan, out of 102 countries that were surveyed, in the position of 19th cleanest. So that wasn't a grave problem. The second question was how common was legal political donations. It came out as 28th cleanest. The third question was the policy consequences of legal political donations. This is when a donation is legally given to a political party, and in Taiwan it is very easy to make legal political donations that are large. Until yesterday [March 18th] there was no ceiling on those donations -- and whether these political legal donations actually affect policy. Here is when Taiwan came out 41st cleanest. So that's not such a great score. So that clearly indicates that there is a problem with donations to political parties to influence decision making. And this is something that is beginning to be addressed in Taiwan. The law that was passed yesterday was a very good step in this direction.
Another piece of evidence we have in the book on the policy of the political finance regime in Taiwan is about disclosure. When we talk about disclosure, what we mean is whether political parties are required to give information about the money they've raised to fund their campaign. And the purpose being, that if it's out in the open, our political parties are less likely to accept illegal donations, or accept donations from businesses that expect them to direct their policies in a certain way.
Lots of countries claim that they have disclosure policies. But in practice what happens is that they only have to give one lump sum figure and only have to give to the government commission. So the purpose of the disclosure is not actually fulfilled in those countries.
We have a categorization of disclosure policies in the book. There are five categories that countries can be given. One is a "high" level of disclosure, which is when you have lots of information about how your election is being funded. Then you can have a "medium" category, then a "low" category, then a "hidden" category. A "hidden" category is given when a country claims to have disclosure policy but in practice the information is hidden from the public.
TT: Why is it so important to disclose the source of the donation?
Rodgriguez: The electorate can hold the political parties accountable and can hold a political leader accountable. For instance what happened in the US with the Enron scandal, which became a political scandal as well as an accounting scandal because the electorate could see that Enron had donated money to political parties. And on the basis of that the public was able to allege that the government had turned a blind eye to Enron's accounting misdeeds.
TT: So where does Taiwan come in that categorization?
Rodgriguez: Where Taiwan comes in that categorization is "low." And this doesn't compare very favorably to other countries in this part of the world. In Asia, some of the other countries surveyed are Japan, Philippines and Thailand which have "high" disclosure policies. Singapore and South Korea have "medium." Taiwan has "low." And then below that is Malaysia that has what's described as "hidden" disclosure. So clearly there are improvements that can be made.
TT: TI-Taiwan is two years old this year. What initiatives have been made in Taiwan?
Rodgriguez: TI-Taiwan had an interesting initiative which has proven to be significant. The initiative is to ask the political parties to sign a pledge to say how much money they raised. This is a really good first step. The next step is to make sure that the figure is accurate. One of the allegations that we have heard in the last couple of days is that there is a ceiling on expenditure, for instance. So parties can only spend a certain amount in an election campaign. But that's regularly violated, and parties give a figure but a figure people question. They ask whether it is actually what was raised or are the parties giving that figure because it looks good. Obviously accounting mechanisms need to be improved. But it's a very good first step.
Liao: We are also in Taiwan to help TI-Taiwan monitor whether the pledge the political parties signed has been fulfilled. After the election we will issue our report of the monitoring.
In many countries, political parties do have to say who gave them the money and how much money they gave. This is a step that Taiwan at the moment isn't considering. It is a step that in many parts of the world is controversial because political parties are worried that if the opposition is forced to disclose who funded it, there might be reprisals on the donors to opposition parties. For example in this Global Corruption Report, it says what happens in the elections in Ukraine in 2000 and 2002, what happened there is that the government enforcement agencies such as the tax agencies used information about donations to opposition parties to then harass the donors. So there are security considerations. What we say at Transparency International is that it is good to move toward better disclosure policies but you have to consider the security of donors. So we are not advocating a blanket prescription of what a disclosure and finance regime should look like; what we are saying is that these are elements of a good finance regime and any country should consider these elements. And one of the key elements is disclosure.
Another piece of information that the Global Corruption Report has that relates to Taiwan is on vote buying. The information sources are from the Taiwanese government. The Ministry of Justice produces good information about vote buying. This is public information and the justice ministry produce it on the basis of surveys. The figures are really alarming. One of the surveys that the Ministry of Justice has released was taken in 1999. In a random sample of people that they surveyed in Taichung, 27 percent said that they were offered money for their votes. And in terms of the numbers involved, the Ministry of Justice estimate that candidates for the legislature in an urban area, which tends to be more expensive than the rural area, might spend as much as NT$100 million on vote buying. So that's US$3 million for buying votes for legislative elections. And where that comes into play with having party regulations on funding is that if somebody's going to have to spend US$3 million buying votes then they are going to get US$3 million from somewhere. So that's why you also have to control the donations that are coming in. It is clear that there are enough demands on the parties to raise huge amounts of money. We haven't seen or heard any concrete evidence on whether money was spent on vote buying for this year's election but we can certainly see that lots of money is spent on organizing rallies and advertising.
TT: What kind of advice would you have for Taiwan's new law on political donations?
Rodgriguez: One of the most interesting issues regarding the new law on political donations in Taiwan is that there is a ceiling on the amount of donations. What we'll be looking at now is whether that law is enforced. Again, the fact that the law is a good law is one thing but whether it is enforced is another thing. And a good law by itself is by no means a good mechanism to make sure that people respect it, and that people who violate it are sanctioned.
To order the Global Corruption Report 2004, call the TI-Taiwan office on 886- 2-2236-2204 or visit www.ti-taiwan.org
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