Q: Why has the AAC chosen to focus on water administration?

A: The goal of establishing the AAC was to help build a well-founded image for “clean and competent” government. That will raise the ROC’s international competitiveness and help our economy to flourish by attracting foreigners to invest, work and live in Taiwan. The AAC has been set up to strengthen the core values supporting clean government here.

Yet “clean government and transparency in Taiwan” cannot be created merely by mouthing slogans. They require serious efforts. A public survey on corruption carried out by the Ministry of Justice revealed that river management officials had the island’s worst reputation for corruption. What’s more, river management offices have also frequently been linked to fraud on major infrastructure projects. In order to erase the deep-rooted image of corruption that people hold about water resource administrators and bolster the morale of water resource engineers, Lai Chien-hsin, the newly appointed head of the South Region Water Resources Office of the Water Resources Agency, actively sought us out last year, hoping to put in place mechanisms that would change water administration culture. Furthermore, after the flooding from Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the Ministry of Economic Affairs budgeted NT$54 billion for water administration. For those reasons, we picked cleaning up water administration as the main thrust of our first wave of efforts.

The AAC wants to serve as a platform, building bridges among the public, industry, and public servants on one side, and engineering units, the Ministry of Audit, and inspection organizations on the other. When there are problems or malfeasance, this platform can be called upon to monitor implementation of the national budget.

For instance, when a mismatch exists between the designs and engineering plans for a site and the real conditions there, or when questions arise about whether to change the designs or contract or increase the budget, this platform provides a way for companies and the government to communicate. It will free public servants from worrying about later being accused of inappropriately benefitting companies, so that they can simply perform their duties as best they see fit. Meanwhile, businesses will need only to carry out their contractual responsibilities in order to obtain what they are legally entitled to, and the public will gain a clear understanding of government policies.

After the floods caused by Typhoon Morakot in August of 2009, the Ministry of Economic Affairs acted to ensure that the principal reservoirs of southern Taiwan remained operational by specially budgeting NT$54 billion to renovate and dredge the reservoirs and strengthen environmental preservation of their watersheds. In light of that major allocation of funds, the AAC has targeted oversight of water administration expenditures as its first main goal. The photo shows the Zengwen Reservoir.

Q: When will this clean-government communication platform become operational? And how will it be operated?

A: Currently the platform is being implemented by the more than 1100 government ethics offices. Apart from fighting and preventing corruption, these offices have started to become more proactive, actively looking to get out and work with various elements of society.

Concrete measures include establishing “anti-corruption platforms” and placing “anti-corruption volunteers” at each level of local government: special municipality, county, city, district, township and neighborhood. These platforms act as task forces charged with encouraging the participation of experts, citizen groups and businesses.

Take water management: NT$54 billion has been budgeted for dredging the Zeng­wen, Nan­hua and Wu­shan­tou reservoirs. Because the project spans ­Chiayi and Ping­tung counties, as well as the cities of Tai­nan and Kao­hsiung, we have created a joint “water management anti-corruption platform,” which brings together all of the local governments’ anti-corruption units. There have been many public forums and opportunities for dialogue.

For instance, I participated in a forum at ­Chiayi’s ­Zhongpu Township. Residents there complained that the dredging of the Zeng­wen Reservoir had led to unsafe conditions, with flooded and mud-covered roads, and dump trucks constantly coming and going. They suggested that the Water Resources Agency instead set up a cable conveyor system to remove the dredged-up silt. But the WRA determined that a cable system would not solve the problem. Ultimately, the decision was made to filter the dredged-up material locally, before removing it as clean sand.

Environmental groups, on the other hand, stressed that to maintain the effective operation of the reservoir, one must look beyond dredging and also manage land use in the watershed—since sediment was entering the reservoir as the result of widespread illegal cultivation of wasabi on Alishan. So we also went up to Alishan to investigate, and then got everyone to sit down and talk about these issues before coming to a resolution.

The problems involved in managing watersheds are extremely complex, and they cannot be fully solved in the short term. We’ve got to break through the single-minded perspectives of each interest group or institution and pursue vertical and horizontal communication. The challenges are immense, but if we don’t take the first step, there won’t be any possibility for change.

Q: Concerns about mountain slope cultivation and watershed management have been around for a long time. For instance, before 1969 the planting of wasabi in Alishan was legal as a form of “Aboriginal agriculture.” More than 200 hectares were under cultivation. Production has since expanded to include another 500 hectares of former forest land. Recently, the Forestry Bureau has, by executive order, allowed that latter area of national forest to be legally used for private purposes. Did any government officials act improperly in allowing this? And what efforts has the AAC been taking to resolve these issues?

A: “The Key Points for Changing the Status of National Forest Land” adopted by the Forestry Bureau in March, which provide a path for illegal uses of forest land to gain legitimacy, have indeed stirred up many objections among citizen groups.

When these land-use arrangements have been in place for a long time, it becomes virtually impossible to prove that people bribed public officials to obtain them. And note that the conviction rate in cases of alleged profiteering by government employees in Taiwan is only 30%. But in accordance with the Public Officials’ Conflicts of Interest Prevention Act, we will certainly investigate if those holding leases to national forest land are relatives of public officials.

Another method is to increase transparency and make publicly available the names of leaseholders and related information, such as when they began to lease the property and so forth. That would shed some light on these issues. Investigative agencies could probe the legal basis for allowing those 500-some hectares of national forest land to be cultivated, and then try to determine whether or not those bureaucratic directives exceeded legal authority.

Q: Most citizens believe the AAC ought to be actively going after lawbreakers. If the AAC plays only the role of facilitating communication and education, wouldn’t that constitute an abrogation of its duties?

A: The public naturally wants to see us sweep in, swords drawn, to cut out all corruption. But follow-up and preventative measures are even more important.

Investigatory agencies are the main force behind efforts to root out corruption, and the AAC will of course crack down on lawbreakers. But we’ve also got to find a way to get at the root of the problem. Naturally, we’re not immediately going to see big results in our efforts to stamp out and prevent corruption. But it’s a duty that we can’t shirk.

Making records public, so that everything is exposed to the light of day and corrupt practices have nowhere to hide, is an important way to bolster the clean-government platform.

For example, in the case of water administration, every river management office has opened up its records to public view, putting its engineering plans, GPS charts, progress reports, construction material needs, evaluation processes, and so forth online for all to see.

The AAC is also looking beyond the campaign to clean up water administration to a second wave of efforts: Last year, several cases were exposed of doctors and administrators at Department of Health hospitals taking kickbacks from medical device manufacturers. Now that those cases have been exposed, it raises various questions: Must contracts obtained through bribes be honored? How should we deal with the medical materials that have already been purchased? It’s a complex tangle of legal issues. In the past, matters like these were handled by the courts. Now we plan on asking the DOH ethics office to establish a clean-government platform, which will bring together industry representatives, hospital administrators and DOH personnel to study these issues.

Q: To put in place mechanisms that will effectively fight and prevent corruption, do we need to strengthen legal statutes or take other related measures?

A: “Preventing corruption” involves measures that keep corruption from sprouting up in the first place, whereas “fighting corruption” involves getting people to understand the threat that corruption poses to the nation and reminding them that they need to “speak up and say no” when confronted with the ugliness of bribes and kickbacks.

Take, for instance, the cases involving several DOH hospitals: 3% of hundreds of millions of NT dollars’ worth of expenditures went into the pockets of doctors and administrators. Ill-gotten gains of this type are one of the reasons that the National Health Insurance has turned into a fiscal black hole. If the problem isn’t tackled at its roots, then we will bequeath these losses and a financially weakened NHI system to the next generation.

Last year, provisions were added to the Anti-Corruption Act to outlaw the taking of bribes even when they are not accompanied by the breaking of another law or the dereliction of duty. For instance, even if the action that the public official facilitates—say, speeding up the inspection process for an engineering project—is in itself legal, accepting a bribe to do it is a crime punishable by a prison term of up to three years and a possible fine of up to NT$500,000. It’s not like before when such bribes were only criminal if the actions procured were themselves illegal.

What’s more, the criminalization of holding property of unknown origin, instituted last year, also constitutes a concrete step taken to fight corruption. The new rules were debated for 20 years and were far from easy to pass. Because the ROC Constitution protects human rights, criminal law upholds the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Consequently, it used to be that prosecutors had to prove that civil servants had increased their property by illegal means in order to secure convictions. Now, when a public official is under investigation for another crime and it is determined that his assets at some period swiftly ballooned, it is incumbent upon him to explain the origin of those sudden riches or be subject to prosecution.

Because the webs of interpersonal connections are so tightly wound among Taiwanese, it’s not easy to implement effective anti-corruption laws or change the way that people approach these matters. But we are determined to march resolutely toward the goal of “clean government and transparency in Taiwan.”