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Ma vows to eliminate corruption

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou, left, shakes hands with a member of a delegation of US journalists on a field study trip to Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore as part of the US-based East-West Center's Asia-Pacific Journalist Fellowships in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: CNA

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday vowed to eliminate corruption by establishing anti-corruption committees and implementing heavier punishments for enterprises involved in bankruptcy scandals if elected president in March.

Saying Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government officials had been involved in more than 270 corruption scandals over the past seven years, Ma vowed to implement a "clean government" policy, setting up anti-corruption committees to oversee the Executive Yuan and local governments if elected.

"The results of the legislative elections reflected the public's dissatisfaction with the government ? We will make incorruptibility a habit for all government officials and civil servants," Ma said yesterday at the National Taiwan University Alumni Center.

While lauding the effectiveness of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in Hong Kong, Ma said he would not consider copying Hong Kong's system unless his proposed committees had failed to perform after two years.

Ma pledged to amend the Election and Recall Law of Civil Servants (公職人員選舉罷免法) so that the law was also applicable to political parties' elections and to revise the Criminal Law (刑法) to make civil servants obtaining property using unidentified resources a crime.

Besides monitoring government officials and civil servants, Ma also vowed to fight corruption in private enterprises and by tycoons by strengthening punishments.

To prevent economic criminals from avoiding justice by fleeing to China or the US, Ma said he would negotiate with China on a mechanism to repatriate economic criminals across the Taiwan Strait and seek US cooperation on repatriating such criminals back to Taiwan.

When asked whether or not he would prohibit his family members from buying and selling stocks if elected president, Ma said investing in the stock market was a normal economic activity as long as no insider trading was involved.

Vowing to show his "political will" to fight corruptions if elected, Ma said he would make his government a transparent one and protect the independence and neutrality of judicial and control organizations, the Central Election Commission and the National Communications Commission.

"The reform will start from within. I will strictly forbid KMT members and government officials from interfering with the operations of those systems and bodies if I am elected president," he said.
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