With the Agency Against Corruption set to celebrate its first anniversary on July 21, netizens and legislators across party lines have been criticizing the agency for hosting events that they say have nothing to do with its mandate.
The agency recently announced that it would host a run at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on July 21, to symbolize the government’s progress in its effort to ensure clean governance and transparent policies.
However, the event has been heavily criticized by legislators and netizens across party lines, who say running has nothing to do with the prevention of corruption by governmental officials or good governance.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) said that since the corruption scandal involving former Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世) came to light, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had done nothing to address the main issue.
Trying to fight corruption by hosting a running event is a sham; the two are completely unrelated, Chiu said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legisltaor Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) also said the events planned by the agency were a waste of taxpayers’ money and meaningless.
If the agency wanted the public to know how to prevent corruption, the agency needed to prosecute a few major cases, Lo said.
Meanwhile, netizens questioned the need to spend public money on the event.
Instead of buying ads on Google, the agency should spend more uncovering corrupt officials, netizens said.
“Yeah, sure, government officials are going to become clean by running,” one netizen with the screen name “makimakimaki” wrote on Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board.
Another netizen going by the username “frozenmoon,” wrote: “A jogging event to promote -anti-corruption, that’s a world wonder right there.”
Yet another netizen, going by the username “shemale,” asked: “What else can the officials at the agency do except jog?” while “keny” asked: “Hosting events for anti-corruption is fine, but a running event? Who’s going to go run? Corrupt officials?”
“Epimenides,” another netizen, said that “the more people who attend the event, the more corrupt officials in the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party] like Lin will think twice about being so corrupt.
Another netizen said that such an event would help corrupt officials train for the time when they have to flee, while others said the event was “wasteful and only children would be duped into going.”
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