Taiwan has continued its slow slide down the rankings of an international corruption index released by Transparency International Taiwan yesterday.
The group held a press conference to announce the results of the Corruption Perception Index -- an annual study ranking countries on corruption. Taiwan ranked 35th on a list of 146 countries, achieving a score of 5.6 on the 10-point index. A higher score on the index indicates less corruption.
In 2002, Taiwan scored 5.6 and ranked 29th, while last year it scored 5.7 but ranked 30th.
"People will think that Taiwan slipped five places when we compare it with last year's figures, but actually Taiwan only slipped three places because another 13 countries joined the evaluation this year and two of them -- Barbados and Malta -- came ahead of Taiwan," said Chai Sung-lin (柴松林), chief executive of the Society Improvement Foundation.
National Taiwan University political science professor Lin Shui-po (林水波) said the nation's ranking began to drop after the Democratic Progressive Party came to government in 2000.
Transparency International did not, in fact, start ranking Taiwan until 2002.
Lin said the relevance of politics to the prevalence of corruption was an issue worth discussing.
"Taiwan is becoming more and more democratic but our place on the corruption index is not improving. Why is this?" Lin said.
Lin also mentioned the success of Singapore, saying that the Southeast Asian nation scored 9.3 and ranked 5th this year -- the highest among Asian countries and the same rank as the year before.
"It has a similar cultural and social background to ours. They can do so well. Why can't we?" he said.
Hsichih Trio defense counsel Su Yiu-chen (蘇友辰), another panelist at the press conference yesterday, said he was worried that Taiwan's rank may fall again next year because of several serious scandals this year, including the March 19 assassination attempt on the president and the more recent controversy over alleged political donations to Costa Rica.
"The assassination attempt impacted on the public, and the alleged [Costa Rica] scandal may have damaged Taiwan's reputation. Both of these may hit us hard as far as our ranking on next year's list is concerned," Su said.
Like last year, Finland topped the index as the least corrupt nation with a score of 9.7. New Zealand ranked second with a score of 9.6. Denmark and Iceland shared third place with a score of 9.5.
Among Asian countries, after Singapore, Hong Kong was listed 16th worldwide with a score of 8.0. On last year's index, Hong Kong was listed 14th with the same score.
China scored 3.4 and ranked 66th last year. Although it scored the same this year its rank slipped to 71st.
The US scored 7.5, the same as last year, and came in 17th. Britain and Canada scored 8.6 and 8.5 and ranked 11th and 12th respectively.
Last year, Bangladesh scored 1.3 to rank last. This year, it scored 1.5, still in last place, but shared the position with Haiti.
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