Another Vice Minister Corruption Case Another Discussion of Ethics of the Politics of Responsibility

Another Vice Minister Corruption Case
Another Discussion of Ethics of the Politics of Responsibility

China Times, editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)
(A translation)
August 10, 2007


A Summary

Several days ago, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hou Ho-shong was charged with graft, but Economic Affairs Minister Steve Ruey-long Chen’s only response seems to have been to suspend Hou from office. Chen has taken neither responsibility nor further action. He says that there was nothing the ministry could have done. In fact, the Ministry of Economic Affairs is not the only government agency that is home to corrupt officials and political appointees who shirk responsibility. Such officials can be found in various agencies at all levels of government, so that giving corruption a free rein is no longer an individual problem but a structural problem. Moreover, it is a problem that has become much worse since Chen Shui-bian took steps to protect himself and his family in the Taiwan Development Corporation and State Affairs Fund cases last year. To the extent that the problem is structural, it relates to executive ethics in a democracy: political appointees must take the blame when they make mistakes, when policies fail and when their subordinates commit crimes of corruption. Political appointees in the DPP administration are not willing to take responsibility: shame on them!

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Please see full text of the editorial below

Several days ago, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hou Ho-shong was taken into custody on court order for alleged corruption. Later, Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Ruey-long Chen reported to the Premier that Hou would be suspended. This seems to be the only step the Minister took over the matter. In addition, Minister Chen, on learning that Hou was involved in bid rigging on many occasions, even said: “If he gave the names of Screening Committee members to contractors, there was nothing the Ministry of Economic Affairs could have done to prevent it.” Minister Chen’s statement reveals a large blind spot concerning the responsibility of high-ranking government officials. Although the China Times has attacked officials many times for failures of ethics and responsibility, we have to keep commenting as officials continue to be charged with corruption and government agencies continue to rig bidding. To be perfectly honest, official corruption on this scale is not just an individual problem but a structural problem.

Counting the high level officials in the current administration who have been charged or detained, there are so many of them, and they represent so many government agencies, that the DPP government might have a shot at an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. In the Presidential Office, we have Wu Shu-chen and others; in the Financial Supervisory Commission, we have Director Kong Jaw-sheng and Commissioner Lin Chung-cheng as well as Lee Chin-cheng, Director of the FSC’s Examination Bureau; in the Ministry of the Interior, we have Vice Minister Yen Wan-chin; in the National Science Council, there is Vice Chairman Hsieh Ching-chih and Lance Wu, head of the National Space Center; in the Fair Trade Commission, there is Vice Chairman Chen Chi-yuan; in the Council of Indigenous Peoples, there is Commissioner Chen Chien-nien; at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, there are former Minister Kuo Yao-chi and her chief secretary Sung Nai-wu; at the National Palace Museum, there is former president Shih Shou-chien; at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, there are a vice minister and Water Resources Agency officials; at the Ministry of Defense, there is a lieutenant general; and at the Kaohsiung Municipal Government, there is a former deputy mayor and a bunch of top directors at various bureaus and offices. These officials under investigation represent so many agencies as well as both local and central government that we are reminded of the saying, these officials in the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan are “birds of the same feather. ” However, though cases of corruption have become so rampant, have we seen even one cabinet or higher official take political responsibility and resign of his or her own accord? No, we have not, not even one.

The examples above are limited to officials who have been charged or taken into custody and do not include other conspicuous abuses or deficiencies. In the recent amnesty, the Ministry of Justice’s planning for follow-up tracking and management of the released offenders was inadequate, leading to the innocent death of an associate professor at National Taiwan University. This would count as a major mishandling in any democratic country, but nobody from the Ministry of Justice has come forward to take the blame. A Taipei District Court judge remonstrated with the Vice Chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission about administrative errors: this was a clear judicial censure of administrative authority, but nobody at the FSC wanted to take responsibility. Former Government Information Office Director-General Cheng Wen-tsang and Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen acted as “touts” in the privatization of the Taiwan Television Company, but the former took responsibility and resigned over the matter. The Minister of Finance had been completely unable to safeguard public equity and has let various tax reductions and allowances get out of hand, but he is too fond of his office to leave it. The Chairman of the National Science Council is the principal in a case of academic plagiarism, but although the NSC’s Academic Ethics Committee has slapped National Chung Hsing University with a stiff penalty for a similar case, it has refrained from inquiring into the Chairman’s involvement in the case. Viewed together, these examples show that the high officials in the DPP administration are like a school of soulless specters on the loose in Taiwanese society, destroying the concept of the ethical responsibility vital for the health of any democracy.

Although for several years now we’ve been hearing about DPP official scandal, the collapse of ethical responsibility seems to have occurred only recently. Last year, after the Taiwan Development Corporation and State Affairs Fund cases hit the news, Chen Shui-bian portrayed the entire scandal as a confrontation between the blue and green camps, as a matter of political self-defense for the nativist government. He did this with the cooperation of high ranking party cadres in order to protect himself. After repeated manipulations of underground radio stations and pro-government media channels, although Chen Shui-bian managed to spin his way through this political crisis without much damage, he severely weakened the legitimacy of anti-graft criticism in society and inadvertently caused agencies in the DPP administration to develop “immunity” against accusations of corruption or incompetence. In addition, the Chen administration is factional; political appointees belong to cliques headed by Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh, Su Tseng-chang or Yu Shyi-kun. They are likened to the director of the General Political Warfare Department at the Ministry of Defense, appointed by the “Four Princes” of the DPP. Many ministers or chairmen have no authority over the appointment of their vice ministers or vice chairmen. In such circumstances, since the vice ministers were not engaged by the ministers, it is small wonder that the ministers might feel absolved of responsibility when his or her deputy is charged with corruption. In this kind of morbid power structure, ministers not only come to see corruption cases as a matter of course but also become apathetic about taking responsibility. It was only a matter of time before official disgrace would reach its present proportions. The situation is now so serious that the Executive Yuan does not even dare to take responsibility over the matter of salary adjustment for civil servants, allowing a co-defendant in a graft case who has already announced his delegation of power to the premiers to decide the matter. When the premier himself has sunk so low, where is room for his subordinates who have stiff necks or back bones?

Government official responsibility is actually quite simple: administrative officials are responsible for carrying out orders, while ranking political appointees are responsible for ensuring that policies succeed. For the latter, democracies are results-oriented and don’t quibble over how those results were achieved. Political appointees are judged by the result of their policies and not by the details of their policies. For this reason, Article Nine of the Civil Servants Discipline Act clearly stipulates that political appointees are not subject to minor penalties like suspensions, demotions, pay cuts or demerits. In other words, the reason why there are only two sanctions for political appointees—admonishment or dismissal—has to do with their ethics of responsibility. When political appointees turn around and brazenly foist the blame for failure on committees, project teams, managerial meeting reports or city council meetings, this is not an ethical problem but a problem of shamelessness. Maybe officials who abandon the ethics of responsibility can keep their positions for a certain time, but they won’t be able to wash away the big marks of shame from their faces so easily.


(Courtesy of China Times)

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