Having been involved in the Miramar Resort protest movement, I’ve finally realized that it’s not really Miramar that is the problem – they are just a greedy, amoral construction company that will do whatever they can to make money – the core problem is the Taidong Council – which has enthusiastically and corruptly enabled Miramar and other like-minded companies.
And this is not wild conjecture - they’ve been found to have corrupted the EIA process by both the High Court and the Supreme Court – twice! They’ve also been found to have corruptly issued illegal building permits.
And yet, somehow, they have avoided prosecution for these serious crimes – there hasn’t even been so much as an investigation!
The first time they said, ‘Aw, sorry, there was a problem with the process’, like the process somehow corrupted itself, and then gone ahead and wilfully committed exactly the same crime again. They are clearly acting with no fear of any consequences whatsoever.
It’s common knowledge that gangsters have infiltrated the Taidong Council – everybody knows supposedly – it’s the career path of choice for any serious gangster - but why do we accept it?
And what on earth is the Taidong Prosecutor doing in all of this? He is either complicit, or a mind-bogglingly incompetent – or maybe there’s a third, innocent explanation but i don’t know what it could be.
In Australia, they have what is called a Royal Commission. Other countries call them a Commission of Enquiry. When a major problem is identified, a panel of eminent judges is appointed to conduct a sweeping investigation that typically runs for a year or more. They have wide-ranging powers to interview all players in order to get to the murky bottom of things. Not sure what the equivalent is in Taiwan but I’ve never seen a case crying out more for such a root and branch investigation. They say it was just the process, ok, let’s take a very long, hard look at the process and see if it did just corrupt itself, as claimed – or were there actual people involved? With a ‘New Day’ DPP central government, hopefully the time has arrived for just such a thing.
If it’s not done, it doesn’t matter how many protests we stage to stop corrupt development, or how many Supreme Court cases we win, it will always be like playing ‘whack-a-mole’.
Unless institutionalized corruption can be exposed at its source, those same problems will just keep happening again and again.
Gangsterism is the dark little secret in Taiwan’s cupboard – it’s all about greed for money and power – nothing else. It’s a disaster for the people of Taiwan and it’s a disaster for the environment. Let’s shine a very large light on it and see what cockroaches start scurrying out – then maybe we will get to play a more meaningful game of ‘whack-a-mole’.