New Taipei City Land Administration Department deputy director-general Wang Sheng-wen (王聖文) last week committed suicide after being targeted by a corruption investigation. The news came as a shock, and the public wants to know what lay behind the tragic incident and how to address the shortcomings in the effort to prevent corruption.
First, the government must adopt a different reform mindset, as it might find it difficult to resolve internal systemic and structural problems. As judicial reform is already under way, if the issue is included in reform discussions and implemented, it will be immediately felt by civil servants and will not be long until it is also felt by the public.
Several areas of judicial reform are being discussed and argued, which at the least is representative of the participants’ passion.
Two main indicators as to whether judicial reform will be effective is the inclusion of “major social incidents” followed by “policy implementation.” A civil servant’s suicide in connection to suspicions of corruption offers three reasons for the national affairs conference on judicial reform to discuss corruption prevention.
The first reason is that the government has a lot of work to do to prevent corruption. Many people understand that a thorough implementation of corruption prevention measures is the best way to protect civil servants. The problem is that the government has not done a good job in this respect.
Anti-corruption efforts have not been aimed at discussing individual cases in which loopholes have made corruption possible, with the result that similar problems keep appearing.
To a certain extent this is the result of the government’s failed anti-corruption efforts, but it could also be the result of a systemic problem in that corruption prevention measures are not taken seriously within the political system.
Many people, particularly in the judicial system, subscribe to the view that it is more important to root out existing corruption than it is to prevent corruption from occurring, and it is due to this attitude that corruption prevention has not been able to gain traction.
Another reason is that government lobbying provides a loophole for corruption to seep in. The political system provides a protective umbrella to people found guilty of corruption, creating the biggest loophole in the prevention framework.
For example, in a political lobbying scandal that occurred a few years ago, nothing happened to those accused of improper lobbying, while those who revealed the scandal had their reputations destroyed. This showed people how to engage in lobbying and exposed a major loophole in the framework.
Politics and the judicial system have been named as two of the main targets of judicial reform, but including corruption prevention measures would be complementary.
The third reason is that corporate corruption prevention is a wasteland. Since a legal representative of a company allegedly played a role in Wang’s suicide, it is possible that that company is the source of the alleged corruption, as politics often is a facilitator or a hit man for business.
The reason is simple: Companies have the funds needed to buy their way into politics and that is how loopholes in the corruption prevention framework are created.
Premier Lin Chuan (林全) has said that corporate corruption is a major problem that includes insider trading and exerting political pressure on or offering incentives to civil servants to convince them to break the law.
Dealing with economic crime is one of the main duties of the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau. This gives the bureau a lot of room to act, and is a reason why this could be made its main duty. If that were to happen, the bureau should make an effort to define the prevention of corporate corruption as its main task instead of maintaining secrecy and preventing espionage.
When a civil servant commits suicide due to allegations of corruption, that is a serious issue that points to loopholes in the corruption prevention framework.
The government now has an opportunity to promote corruption prevention efforts, and if the national conference on judicial reform were to include corruption prevention as one of its main issues, the conference should be able to have some effect.
Yang Yung-nane is a political science professor at National Cheng Kung University and a member of the board of directors of Transparency International Chinese Taipei.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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