Sun, Nov 19, 2000 page3

• Peng's fall from grace draws mixed reactions

  COMEUPPANCE Some were shocked by the Nantou County commissioner's imprisonment on corruption charges, but others say he has received his just deserts

  • By Jou Ying-cheng / STAFF REPORTER
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  The court ruling which ordered Nantou County Commissioner Peng Pai-hsien's (彭百顯) detention on corruption charges may have come as a shock to the many people conscious of Peng's image as a clean politician and distinguished legislator.

  The prosecution suspects that the 51-year old commissioner of the county worst hit by the devastating 921 earthquake has misappropriated post-quake relief donations and unlawfully manipulated the contracting process for reconstruction projects.

  While the truth remains a matter for judicial investigation, to the local communities of Nantou Peng's current troubles are not news and have their origins in his tough personality and governing style, although his supporters and adversaries have different accounts of how these have conspired to cause him trouble.

  

  A large group of Peng Pai-hsien's supporters, including his wife Wu Wen-wan, second from right, protest outside the Nantou County District Prosecutor's office yesterday.

  PHOTO: LU CHANG-PING, TAIPEI TIMES

  Withdrawing from the DPP in 1997, Peng -- the three-term legislator who enjoyed a nationwide reputation as a financial and economic professional -- won the election for commissioner as an independent candidate by a tiny margin ahead of KMT and DPP candidates.

  After becoming commissioner he soon removed councilors' traditional entitlement to "small construction funds" (小型工程款).

  These are a long-standing feature of Taiwan's local politics. To gain support from county councilors, county governments allocate money from their annual budgets to councilors for construction work in their constituencies.

  In practice, however, the money often ends up in corrupt councilors' pockets, is used to benefit supporters, or even buy votes. It is, therefore, a much criticized practice.

  "Peng is a person with ideals. He has a deep hatred of corruption. His decision to remove unearned profits from some councilors displeased them," said Peng's close aide and secretary, Yang Shun-ming (楊順明).

  The County Council Speaker Cheng Wen-tung (鄭文銅), however, disagreed with this assessment.

  He said that conflict between the commissioner and the council started when Peng stopped paying salaries to county government officials for several months, in a bid to stress to the central government how financially deprived the county was when he first became commissioner.

  "The council disagreed with the drastic measure but he was too persistent with his own ideas," Cheng told the Taipei Times.

  He attributed the government-council tension that has existed ever since to Peng's tough and persistent personality. It is for this reason that Peng has been nicknamed "His Majesty" (皇上) in the council.

  The speaker has been a keen political enemy of Peng. The council is apparently divided between the commissioner's faction and the speaker's faction, with the support of 15 and 22 respectively of the total 37 councilors. The factions cut across party lines. Both the commissioner and the speaker have KMT and independent adherents, while all four DPP councilors are considered to be in the KMT speaker's faction.

  The "small constructions funds" are just one example of the changes Peng has made to the way public construction projects are contracted. Peng's opponents claim he took total control of almost every project and always awarded the contracts to certain businessmen he favored. His supporters say that is an exaggeration and that integrated planning and contracting were necessary for the sake of efficiency.

  Lise Lai (賴麗如), a councilor and Peng supporter, said that, for the sake of the county's development, it is better for the county government to carry out integrated and macro-planning, than have all aspects of a construction project carried out separately.

  "There are actually not many companies in Nantou capable of carrying out big, undivided construction projects. Companies which contract for specific parts of construction projects would, of course, complain if there were," she said.

  But a county council official, formerly a senior local journalist, said that Peng's big problem is that he sees others as corrupt and only believes in himself and his own small group of aides.

  When he became commissioner, Peng brought several previous assistants from the legislature with him to the county government and set up his own "commissioner's office," which was not a part of the institutional machinery of the county.

  Many local politicians and county government officials have complained that his eight assistants have too much power over county affairs.

  Many of the assistants are ostensibly hired as "temporary employees," filling vacancies at various government departments. But, they have actually worked with Peng at the very center of decision-making, overriding even the heads of government departments.

  In addition to relying on personal assistants, allegations of bypassing normal administrative procedure have been made about Peng's use of foundations.

  Regarding the ongoing corruption case, the prosecutors have claimed that some NT$30 million of quake relief donations -- which are supposed to be in the government's relief account -- have gone to two private foundations chaired by Peng.

  But Peng's camp has a different explanation.

  "The New Nantou (新南投) Foundation receives only donations from Peng's relatives and friends for the operation of the county affairs [cable TV] channel (縣政頻道)," Yang Shun-ying said.

  The council had cut the budget of the county government's information department. Peng therefore set up the cable TV channel as the government's official media mouthpiece, using resources from the foundation.

  Yang insists the money coming into the foundation had, from the very beginning, nothing to do with quake relief. But prosecutors believe that Peng persuaded some would-be donors to government relief funds into donating money to his foundation instead.

  The other foundation in question, the Nantou County Construction and Development Foundation (南投縣建設發展基金會) was set up early last year using the financial surpluses from two fund-raising activities jointly held by the county government and Buddhist groups.

  According to the rules of the foundation, the incumbent Nantou commissioner must serve as its chairman.

  Citing the rules, Yang argued that this was not Peng's foundation and that its funds were nevertheless all spent on post-disaster reconstruction.

  But this does not eradicate the possibility that Peng, the incumbent commissioner, could use the money of his own volition.

  Councilors have been arguing that Peng used the foundations as a means to avoid supervision by the county council.

  "We knew the foundations would cause him trouble," said Tang Huo-sheng (湯火聖), head of the DPP's Nantou office. "But this [Peng's detention] wouldn't have happened had there not been the 921 quake." He said, "There was too huge an amount of donations that he [Peng] was eager to have at his own disposal."

  Although Peng's governance of the county has been highly controversial, his potential for re-election next year has not diminished.

  "If he is not convicted, he will still be the most likely winner of the election for commissioner," Tang said. He called Peng a smart politician and the most earnest and hard-working Nantou commissioner ever.

  Tang said the three major parties could all field candidates, but Peng was still the most popular politician. This was why, said a council official who declined to be named, Peng was not afraid of falling foul of so many people. "He could win again by catering to less than a mere 30 percent of voters."
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