Analysis: Taiwan's Wave of Corruption Scandals

Political analyst Courtney Donovan Smith explains what Taiwan's recent wave of corruption scandals means for the country.

Transcript

00:00So, what do you make of this recent spate of corruption cases?

00:03Is it a sign that corruption's on the rise in Taiwan overall, or just that prosecutors

00:07have gotten more proactive about cracking down on it?

00:11I can't say for sure.

00:13It's quite possible that they're getting more proactive.

00:16It also could be that corruption has indeed ticked up over the last few years.

00:21I don't know if there's a connection here, but traditionally, William Lai's been associated

00:26with anti-corruption efforts, particularly when he was the mayor of Tainan.

00:31So this may be a top-down thing, but there's no definitive proof on that that I'm aware

00:36of.

00:37What does it say about Taiwan's political culture?

00:39And is this a new low point, or has it always been quite this bad?

00:43Oh, it used to be far worse.

00:46It used to be that corruption was the norm and not the exception, and now it appears

00:50that it still remains the exception.

00:52It's worth noting that there are 113 seats in the legislature, and there's two of them

00:57under investigation currently.

01:01So we're not looking at a huge percentage here.

01:04That's less than 2%.

01:07It is true that a fairly high percentage of the county council speakers are under investigation.

01:16That's not a surprise.

01:17Local governments have often been a little bit more of a hotbed of corruption, particularly

01:21in the center and the south.

01:23And do you think that we're going to see big changes after this slew of scandals, or will

01:28it continue to be business as usual?

01:30I think that with the DPP and the KMT, because relatively speaking we're looking at a small

01:36number of people relative to the massive scale of the parties, I don't think we're going

01:41to see big changes in either of those two parties.

01:45At this point, however, in the TPP, at the very least there's been gross mismanagement

01:53of their financial disclosure forms, and frankly there's a decent chance that they're just

01:59going to collapse, that they may no longer be electable.

02:02The latest Formosa poll that just came out a couple days ago, people's negative feelings

02:09toward the party jumped by about 16%.