Riding on the campaign to oust President Chen Shui-bian (
These changes have been discussed for years, yet a series of anti-corruption bills are still awaiting review thanks to the pan-blue camp's obstructionist majority in the legislature. It has been a long time since the Cabinet submitted the bill that would form an anti-corruption bureau investigating corruption among public servants, yet even this potentially popular piece of legislation is still languishing.
Smarting from accusations of corruption against Presidential Office staff and members of the first family, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has proposed that nine "sunshine laws" be a priority for the next legislative session -- these are bills for an anti-corruption bureau, lobbying conduct, legislator conduct, conflicts of interest for officials and the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties, as well as amendments to the Law on Property Declaration by Public Servants, the Public Officials Election and Recall Law, the Political Donations Law and the Political Parties Law.
The DPP's nine sunshine laws cover more ground than the KMT's four sunshine laws. The DPP's proposals regulate not only public servant exercise of power but also conflicts of interests after retirement or in subsequent employment, the acceptance of political donations and lobbying in the legislature. They are stricter and more sophisticated, and extend to party assets and political donations as well as campaign spending.
It is a positive thing that the government and the opposition say that the passage of bills of this nature is a top priority. In this respect, a comparison between the government's nine proposals and the opposition's four is not a matter of nine being more or better than four. Rather, Taiwan needs to take the best of all proposals to establish a system of oversight that is practical, conforms to demands for social justice and that is difficult to evade.
If legislators from both camps can find the wisdom to put aside their political differences and treat each bill or amendment on its merits, then we may yet be able to establish a mechanism of prevention and punishment that can transform the political and bureaucratic spheres.
The objective of proposing these sunshine bills is to pursue clean governance and set up a system of regulations that create a reasonable and reliable relationship between politicians and business circles. It is hoped that the government and the opposition will heed the public's poor view of corruption and desire for cleaner government.
This can only happen if a temporary halt is called to the knee-jerk reactions based on opposition to or support for Chen. If this happens, the pain of this crisis may still not rob Taiwan of an opportunity to distance partisan wrangling from the production of much-needed (and non-partisan) legislation.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under