The legislature needs to find ways to make it more appealing for the public to keep track of what it does, panelists said at Supervision over the Congress International Conference.
“We need to remember, not everyone is a political animal,” said Shih Hsin-min (施信民), former chairman of Citizen Congress Watch.
The conference, which was held at Soochow University last Friday and Saturday and brought together academics from across the Asia-Pacific region, was a lively discussion on a timely topic that aired concepts of government transparency as varied as the backgrounds of the speakers themselves.
Photo Courtesy of CITIZEN Congress watch
The government is planning to have comments appear on the Web site in real time, so that the public can share their thoughts and feedback on the legislative session, former premier Simon Chang (張善政) said.
Shih said creating a system that ranks the best parts of legislative sessions would make it more appealing to the public.
“A viewer rating system could allow users to judge the quality of dialogue,” Chang added.
Photo Courtesy of CITIZEN Congress watch
TRANSPARENCY AND DEVELOPMENT
Guest speaker Cynthia Gabriel, founder of the Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, is based in Malaysia and sees government transparency as pivotal for the region’s development.
“If parliament is not monitored and held accountable, we’ll have a case of creeping authoritarianism,” she said, citing the 1Malaysia Development Berhad corruption scandal which has mired Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in controversy in recent months.
Photo Courtesy of CITIZEN Congress watch
“The entire scandal has engulfed the nation,” she added. “He [Razak] is using public institutions to protect himself and his private interests.”
Gabriel said this is a serious transgression that has threatened parliamentary immunity.
“Even though [the Malaysian government] is hiding information from Malays, other neighboring countries are investigating,” she said.
Fellow guest speaker Donal Fariz, from Indonesian Corruption Watch, said sharing experiences is key to better understanding the common challenge of corruption.
“Corruption is a transnational crime,” he said.
NEW SOUTHBOUND POLICY
Gabriel added that in a globalized world, citizens of other countries have a role to play in exposing the corruption of other governments, particularly those within one’s own region.
“The nexus between business and politics is an important one,” Gabriel said, in response to a question regarding Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy and government transparency.
“Taiwan is disadvantaged geo-politically... Although it’s track record is by no means perfect, it defends it’s democratic values and must espouse them when it does business abroad,” she said.
Fariz said he meets a lot of Taiwanese business people in his hometown of Jakarta these days, attracted by the infrastructure projects kicked off by current Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
“Transparency combats corruption and a corruption-free environment is the foundation for investment,” Fariz said. “That’s why it’s so critical.”
HISTORICAL EXCEPTIONS
Linda Gail Arrigo, an assistant professor at Taipei Medical University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, attended the conference to raise concerns over what she sees as the government’s misuse of privacy laws in blocking the release of historical records.
In response, Chang said this may be a case where the legal statutes conflict.
“There is considerable resistance on the part of government ministries,” Arrigo said. “Even if they are released,” Arrigo added, “the names on the photocopies are always blacked out.”
The level of government transparency for the present day has improved considerably, she said, but the past remains convoluted and this makes transitional justice impossible.
“How can we refute denials of the 228 Incident if we can’t access the records?” Arrigo said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby