"Heigh ho, Silver and away" was the Lone Ranger's call to action. After uttering that battle cry he would go off to fight evil all across the American west.
For those of you who don't remember it, the Lone Ranger was a television cowboy whose show was very popular in the US throughout the 1950s. The Lone Ranger always wore a mask to conceal his identity from the evildoers he was pursuing. He worked alone except for his faithful Indian friend, Tonto.
It would seem that Taiwan has its own Lone Ranger. I refer to Tsai Bai-hsiu (蔡百修), known locally as the "Vote Buying Buster" ("Dec. 1 elections: Crusader tackles vote buying one violation at a time," Nov. 12, p.3).
Tsai has waged one-man crusade against vote buying in Taiwan. Much like another comic book and TV superhero, Superman, Tsai has a kind of dual identity. By day he is a mild mannered 59-year-old mineral water dealer. By night he is Taiwan's most famous anti-vote-buying crusader.
Out of a personal commitment to end vote buying and election fraud, Tsai has been turning in candidates who engage in those practices to the Ministry of Justice, passing along information, tips and sometimes video tapes that have resulted in a number of convictions. In the process he has become quite the local celebrity, starring in a Ministry of Justice TV commercial which promotes the ministry's anti-vote-buying campaign.
Tsai has formed a civilian "posse," to use the old cowboy term, to hunt down and report candidates who engage in vote buying. He has also picked up several million New Taiwan dollars in bounty from the ministry for his tips -- the ministry has a reward system for persons who provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of candidates engaged in election fraud or vote buying.
All of this highlights an important but often overlooked aspect of crime, be it election fraud, property crime or violent crime; that is, the police acting on their own cannot curb these things. Although police solve crimes, the information they use to do so usually comes from non-police sources, that is, the public. The public must be an integral part of crime prevention and crime detection.
In some types of crime, vote buying being an excellent example, without the public's assistance the police are largely ineffective. Most candidates won't walk right up to a uniformed cop and offer to buy his vote.
Well, maybe I should take that back; this is Taiwan after all. But, either way, the public's assistance is a necessary part of the fight against crime.
Projects like the ministry's reward system for information on election fraud are a good way to get the public involved. Bounties, rewards, premiums, whatever name they go by, represent a time-honored, often effective way of getting the public involved in assisting the police. But any system of getting the public involved in crime prevention or police assistance must overcome a number of challenges, the first of which is public apathy.
Many people in Taiwan would say that there is little they can do either as individuals or as groups to end crimes like vote buying, official corruption or drug abuse. These things are part of life, like colds and bad weather, they believe. Closely related is the public's feeling that fighting crime is the government's duty and that the government should "do something."
Also, of course, there is a reluctance to get involved or a fear of "rocking the boat" by becoming a participant in what might be termed "community policing." Closely tied in with this is the public's general distaste for having anything to do with the police.
In addition to all these challenges, police-citizen cooperation faces the problem that in Taiwan there is little sense of general community spirit other than on "trash-burning day;" that is when the neighbors get together to burn hell money.
Tsai's Lone Ranger campaign points out the central place of the public in fighting election crime and is a great example of how well it can work. Any additional programs along those lines, however, will face the above problems. Be that as it may, the government cannot end vote buying or election fraud by itself. It needs the public's help.
The public should realize that you don't have to wear a mask to help fight crime. As Tsai tells his anti-vote buying posse, "Don't be afraid. The bad guys dare not harm you."
Brian Kennedy is an attorney who writes and teaches on criminal justice and human rights issues.
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