President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) clean government policies have failed to realize substantial reductions in corruption, representatives of the local branch of Transparency International said yesterday.
“The Ma administration is kind of a pity. In the past everyone viewed him as emphasizing clean government, but if you look at the scores, there is not nearly as much progress as people imagined,” said Jhang Hong-lin (張宏林), a member of Transparency International Taiwan’s board of directors.
He gave Ma a “barely passing” grade on his anti-corruption policies.
National scores on Transparency International’s official ranking has remained largely stable throughout Ma’s term, with the Taiwan currently receiving a grade of 62 on the ranking versus 57 when Ma first took office.
Based on a composite of international ranking, higher scores on the ranking’s scale correlate with lower perceptions of corruption. Regionally, while Taiwan’s scores are higher than China (37) and South Korea (56), the nation continues to lag behind Japan (75), Hong Kong (75) and Singapore (85).
Meanwhile, results of the Transparency International’s national telephone survey on corruption perceptions showed that people’s perceptions have worsened during Ma’s tenure, with people currently giving government officials an overall score of 4.97 last year versus 5 in 2008 when Ma was elected on a wave of public discontent following corruption scandals involving former Democratic Progressive President (DPP) Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Jhang said that Ma’s four “sunshine bills” increasing reporting requirements for government officials had not been fully implemented.
“While we have a Lobbying Act (遊說法), if you pull the files at the Control Yuan, you will find that there is almost no records of lobbying,” he said, attributing the lack of registration to the Legislative Yuan’s unwillingness to accept public scrutiny, combined with its sway over law enforcement bodies.
Control Yuan officials told him in meetings that they were unwilling to more rigorously enforce reporting requirements for campaign spending for fear legislators would retaliate by cutting the their branch’s budget, he said, adding that it would be difficult for there to be progress in combating corruption unless legislators were willing to stop “covering each other’s butts.”
Legislators were perceived as being the most corrupt of any government officials in the survey, receiving an average grade of 3.99 versus 5.84 for ordinary government officials.
Transparenct International Taiwan executive director Juang Wen-jong (=) called for a comprehensive review of national laws governing corruption with a focus on the legislative and judicial branches. The Legislative Yuan should allow for the establishment of an internal anti-corruption watchdog office similar to the departments of civil service ethics ubiquitous throughout the executive branch.
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