Mon, Jan 14, 2002 page8

• Editorial: Sex and the city's mayor

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  Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been facing flak since a Japanese book was found to be on sale in Taiwan giving details about where visitors to Taiwan might find prostitutes in the country. Frankly, we find it hard to imagine how the book can do justice to its theme given the extent of the sex industry in Taiwan; only something of encyclopedic size and length could cover this topic adequately. Ma's specific problem is that the un-caped crusader vowed to eradicate the sex trade in Taipei City within two months. This was four months ago. So the continued presence of the sex trade, and publicity about it abroad, has been somewhat of an embarrassment. Not of course that anyone needed the Japanese to tell them you can still buy sex in Taipei City.

  It's hard to resist a smile when witnessing the efforts of the pro-China media, to whom Ma is the great hope for a future recovery of reunificationist power, try and defend their poster boy. This they have tried to do by saying that the central government, in particular the Government Information Office has been lax in letting such an "obscene" or "illegal" publication be sold in Taiwan. This is, of course, pernicious nonsense. There is nothing obscene about the travel guide. And the concept that books should be banned if they might lead to "illegal" behavior, ie, something that conflicts with the law as the government has made it, is straight out of the martial law era -- to which, admittedly, most of Ma's supporters would like to return. The irony is that an easy defense should be open to Ma, namely that research for the book, which was published last month, was carried out prior to his anti-sex trade campaign and therefore the information is out of date and Taipei is a very different city compared with six months ago. But Ma can't use this argument, of course, for the simple reason that any resident of Taipei City knows from daily observation that it is simply false.

  It is interesting to contrast Ma's so-called campaign against the sex trade with Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) when he was mayor. Chen collected information on buildings that were operating as fronts for prostitution then cut off their electricity and water, thus driving them out their premises. Ma on the other hand has seemed to prefer random police raids on love hotels by armed policemen, until stopped from doing so by the Council of Grand Justices.

  In terms of effectiveness there is no doubt that Chen succeeded where Ma has held press conferences. There was a limit to Chen's success however -- the center of the sex trade simply moved from its traditional Taipei City haunts over the river into Chungho and Yungho. Unfortunately, any action against the sex trade here is always from a moralistic perspective which insists on eradicating it instead the commonsense view the citizens of Taipei tell poll after poll. This is to accept the demand for such a trade and therefore its supply will always be with us, in which case it is better regulated than criminalized -- specifically to keep it out of residential areas and away from schools, and to keep gangsters out of the trade.

  And there is one last irony: Ma insists that anyone who comes to Taipei to patronize prostitutes will be arrested. His own police tell him that there is no law under which purchasers of sex can be arrested. It is not illegal in Taipei to buy sex, only to sell it. You might have thought a former minister of justice like Ma would know this. But then, given Ma's recent proclivity for the communists across the Strait, maybe he has forgotten exactly which country's legal code he is supposed to uphold.
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