On Monday last week, two female ministers in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet resigned.
Yuko Obuchi stepped down as Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry for two reasons:
First, some of her expenditure receipts showed that she might have used political donations to buy baby supplies, cosmetic products and other items from a boutique run by her twin sister.
The second reason were suspicions that her support groups and the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan’s chapter in Gunma Prefecture used political funds to treat her supporters to trips to a popular theater and to buy them gifts.
Several hours later, Midori Matsushima also stepped down as Japanese minister of justice, tendering her resignation after the opposition camp said she had handed out paper fans featuring her portrait and policies to voters and that doing so was a violation of electoral law. Once the story broke, Matsushima quickly resigned in great embarrassment.
Although Obuchi was not directly involved in the alleged misconduct perpetrated by her support groups and the Liberal Democratic Party’s Gunma branch, she still took full responsibility for their wrongdoing.
In Matsushima’s case, although paper fans can be seen almost everywhere — how expensive can they be — a rule is a rule, and such gifts are banned by Japan’s electoral laws.
By comparison, the standards of Taiwan’s electoral regulations and law enforcement are much lower, and the authorities often overstep their bounds in such matters.
During his terms as Taipei mayor, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) allegedly paid his water and electricity bills, as well as his daughters’ credit card bills in the US, with money from his special mayoral allowance fund.
A Taipei City Government employee later served nine months in prison for using fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements from Ma’s special allowance fund. Those receipts included purchases unrelated to public affairs, such as women’s underwear, a Pikachu doll, Viartril-S capsules, perfume and cosmetics. Despite this, the judges reviewing the case against Ma for misusing his special allowance fund found that these receipts were all acceptable.
Since Ma was elected president in 2008, he has used money from his presidential state affairs fund to buy moon cakes and given them to several social groups that care for the weak and disadvantaged across the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) county and city chapters. Does this not count as the president — who also serves as KMT chairman — engaging in influence peddling on behalf of his party?
When Ma used money from the president’s state affairs fund to celebrate the birthday of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), also a former KMT chairman, was there really no need to draw a line between the party and the state, as well as one between public and private affairs?
When Ma took NT$84,000 from the presidential fund to purchase 35 tickets to entertainer Pai Ping-ping’s (白冰冰) concert for his friends, did that in no way imply that he was using public money for private gain? Or that he used his influence to benefit his friends and supporters?
All this makes one wonder if Taiwanese should not learn from how the Japanese public keeps an eye on its politicians and how strictly regulations are enforced there.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry