Will the Gaoxiong city council speakers election spark a "clean hands" style massive investigation of Taiwan’s political elite?
Yes. This is the start of Taiwan’s big anti-corruption drive!
No. Scandals erupt and get hushed up. So will this one.
Perhaps in a few years, but not now.
0voters
I’m just vondering what the investigation of the rigged election of Zhu Anxiong as Gaoxiong city council speaker might lead to.
The political scene here is corrupt big time and several leading politicians are in cahoots with the mob. A similar situation in Italy led to the start of a massive cleanup of the political life in Italy from 1992 on. This operation, called “clean hands”, led to the investigation of 5000 politicians, etrepreneurs etc in Italy in the early 1990’s and changed the Italian political landscape completely. Former Italian PM Giulio Andreotti has been convicted on murder charges, while a whole generation of Italian politicians have been hounded out of office by a group of determined judges.
I feel that the press here is free enough to pursue such a story to the bitter end, moreover, the general population would appear to be increasingly fed up with the antics of the politicians here. As the Italian “Clean hands” operation started with a small investegation in Milano, the Taiwanese equivalent could start with an investegation of a bit of vote-buying in Gaoxiong.
Many countries have freewheeling press and media outlets. This however is no guarantee that corruption of the high and mighty will be successfully prosecuted. Take a look at the free press of Latin America, but contrast that with the fact that corruption is rarely successfully prosecuted. Taiwan might fit into that category as well. Once the attention dies down, the same characters will be back in the saddle. Ditto for poor performance. It is no coincidence that the minister of transportation and communications during the last China Air crash was the head of China Air during the 1994 crash while the head of China Air was the former minister of transportation and communication during that time. Did I get that right? Now how did that happen?
Perhaps institutional strength is important as well. I believe that the institutions guarding against vote buying etc. are getting stronger here. While they might not be strong enough to tackle a bunch of power-hungry pols now, they are slowly getting there, despite desperate containment attempts by the 3 major political parties in the Gaoxiong case.
The people in charge have no interest in seeing this little scandal go any farther. If it had not been for a loud chorus condemming the DPP for alleged “black gold” politics this would of quietly happened and not a word would of been mentioned. As it was, someone got ahold of it and blew it wide open. I honestly hope and pray this changes things in Taiwan.
I’m tired of the lord/liege mentality where you have to owe something to somebody. I thought taiwan had outgrown that, but I must be mistaken. Most problems in taiwan can be attributed to uncaring/unaware polticians. Who protect vested interests. What good is your vote, if someone can by it for a measly $1000NT?
Taiwan has to change or become a thing of the past. I don’t want anybody to learn how it was in Argentina when the economy collpased last year.
Elections here are still downright dirty as far as I know, especially the local ones. However, the LY elections in December 2001 were a great success for the DPP, as they managed to crack down on vote-buying etc. However, the most depressing feature here is that the pendulum swings back and forth rather violently. One year, a LY election is clean, the next a local election turns out to be much dirtier.
Another argument for some kind of massive corruption investegation is that while the establishment in Italy was against it (ande got carted off to jail), there was a group of prosecutors, who managed to keep the investegation rolling. That’s what they need here.
