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DOUBLE STANDARD? Civil servants are required to register banquets
and gifts, but among 700,000 records, none were from the Presidential Office
or Executive Yuan By
Chung Li-hua and Jason Pan / Staff
Reporter, with Staff Writer Tue,
May 20, 2014 - Page 1 President
Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) highly touted drive to
implement tough measures to root out corruption is empty rhetoric, political
pundits said, as they drew on information from government databases to make
their case. When
Ma first assumed the presidency in May 2008, the government drew up the
Regulations on Civil Servants’ Ethics and Rectitude
(公務員廉政倫理規範),
which prohibited civil servants from receiving gifts or gratuities from
parties with vested interests, or attending dinners or receiving
entertainment hosted by such parties. Exceptions
are made for “traditional festive events” and those of “ceremonial protocol
in the conduct of civil servants carrying out official duties.” However,
in these cases, they must receive approval from supervisors, report to their
department’s ethics office and make an official record of attending such
events, the regulations say. However,
the past six years of records held by the Ministry of Justice’s Agency
Against Corruption show that while there are more than 700,000 records of
civil servants receiving gifts, attending banquets and being asked to lobby
on government project cases, other than receiving gifts, the Presidential
Office and the Executive Yuan have made no such declarations of gratuities,
critics said. Political
pundits said that at the end of legislative sessions, lawmakers on
legislative committees traditionally host banquets, with top officials from
the Presidential Office, Executive Yuan and government ministries in
attendance. Of
the numerous civil servants at the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan
in attendance, not a single one has reported attending such banquets, critics
said. Critics
said that Ma and his successive premiers have also frequented numerous
banquets of various sizes and similar high-level dinner functions. For
example, they said, Ma was an invited guest at the annual European Day dinner
hosted by the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT) on Thursday last
week. Over
the past six years, Ma has also attended annual Lunar New Year banquet events
hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, as well as ones jointly organized
by the Straits Exchange Foundation and Taiwanese business associations with
investments in China, the pundits said. Premier
Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) has also been a frequent guest at banquets
hosted by Taiwan’s Chinese National Association of
Industry and Commerce, they added. Critics
questioned Ma and Jiang’s attendance at these functions after media reports
about the American Chamber of Commerce pressuring the government to allow the
import of US beef containing trace levels of ractopamine
and the ECCT making requests to lift Taiwan’s ban on more than 2,000 products
from China. In
the reports, the ECCT said the lifting of the ban would facilitate the
importation of European brand products into Taiwan, via China. “Is
it not a conflict of interest likely to benefit certain parties of interest?”
the critics asked, saying that the president and the premier should follow
the rules for recording their participation at these banquet events. An
official with the Agency Against Corruption responded that although the
president and the premier must follow regulations on ethics, each case is to
be assessed individually. “From
the president and the premier down, there are several layers of civil
servants. Clarification is needed about their direct influence on decisionmaking, or whether they are acting in accordance
with responsibilities assigned by law. Therefore, we must not point to
culpability all the way to the top,” the official said. However, National Tung Hwa University
professor Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒)
disagreed. “Most civil servants are just following orders from above. The real decisionmaking lies with the president and the premier,
so they must give clear accounts to the public,” Shih said. “Ma has always applied a double standard, with stringent requirements
for others, but giving himself a wide berth to shirk
his responsibilities,” Shih added. * 《Taipei Times》2014/05/20。 |
