On Monday last week, Citizen Congress Watch released a statement calling for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) not to stand for election as co-convener of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee until a judicial investigation confirms her innocence in an ongoing legal case.
The statement also said that when deciding who to nominate as committee conveners, legislative caucuses of all parties should live up to public expectations by making sure to avoid conflicts of interest.
Third, they said that laws and regulations concerning the Legislative Yuan should be reviewed to establish a comprehensive system for avoiding conflicts of interest among legislators.
Citizen Congress Watch’s statement continues: “There is no lack of precedents in the Legislative Yuan of legislators accused in ongoing legal cases serving as committee conveners. In 2005, then-KMT legislator Ho Chih-hui (何智輝), who was barred from leaving the country because of his involvement in a legal case, nonetheless served as convener of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee. Furthermore, Ho used his authority as committee convener to request that relevant judicial departments produce a special report concerning ‘restrictions on leaving the country’ and the ‘lack of openness in investigations.’”
Given his legal situation at the time, Ho’s inquiry about restrictions on leaving the country was a clear case of failing to avoid a conflict of interest.
A book published on July 31, 2020, about the “odyssey” of former minister of justice Morley Shih’s (施茂林) legal career contains the following passage on page 253: “KMT legislator Ho Chih-hui, who was investigated in connection with the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office’s investigation of a black gold [corruption money] hub and was barred from leaving the country, used the opportunity of his turn as convener of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee to instruct the Ministry of Justice to prepare a ‘special report on restrictions on leaving the country.’ This move by Ho triggered a controversy over legislators involved in legal cases and their use of parliamentary interpolation to exert pressure on officials. This was the challenge that Shih encountered as he faced a special report for the first time as minister of justice.”
The book’s account of the affair goes on as follows: “When a pan-green legislator challenged him by asking whether the prosecutors would be put under pressure, Shih replied that ‘the prosecutors will have learned from bitter experience.’ Ho Chih-hui, who was seated on the podium, turned red in the face before paling to white and then turning blue. This was Shih’s typical style of couching his persistence in moderate tones, so that Ho could do nothing about it. Shih’s choice of words also upheld prosecutors’ dignity and won him the support of rank-and-file prosecutors.”
Ho was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for bribery, but he has been on the run for many years and it is worth asking where he is now.
The aforementioned episode concerning Ho’s obvious failure to avoid a conflict of interest was recounted in an article published on May 1, 2005, in issue 278 of Wealth Magazine (財訊), in which the author Wang Mo-fei (王墨菲) said that as soon as Shih became minister of justice, he demonstrated a completely different style from his predecessor Chen Ding-nan (陳定南).
When faced with similar situations, Chen would often meet the attack head-on, strongly and sternly accusing whichever legislator posed the question of trashing and trampling on the judiciary. Shih, in contrast, was gentle as well as tough.
In addition to giving appropriate answers to legislators’ questions in public, he would also immediately arrange private meetings over dinner with members of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, in the hope of using backstage communication to avoid stirring up controversies or causing suspicion or rifts between himself and the legislators concerned.
Compared with Chen’s unwillingness to engage in give-and-take with opposition legislators and his almost complete lack of communication with them, Shih’s way of handling such matters was much more delicate.
Looking back on these events that took place nearly two decades ago, we can see how government officials felt powerless in the face of legislators’ overextended powers and could only respond by making compromises for the greater good and engaging the legislators in “backstage communication.”
However, considering how much Taiwan’s democracy and rule of law have developed since then, can the public still tolerate legislators’ overreach and their failure to avoid conflicts of interest?
This is an issue that merits more attention and deeper investigation.
Chen Yi-nan is an arbitrator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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