Director Mark Pyman of Transparency international (TI) UK’s Defense and Security Programme visited the Control Yuan (CY) on the afternoon of June 11, 2014, and exchanged ideas with CY Members Dr. Ger Yeong-kuang, Dr. Sheree Shiow-Ru Ma and Dr. Teresa Yin on CY’s supervision work regarding government defence integrity.
Dr. Ger, also Chairperson of CY Committee on National Defense and Intelligence Affairs, noted that the CY’s core task has always been to ensure government integrity and ethics, and, particularly, the fourth term CY members spared no efforts to handle citizen complaints and conduct investigations into various types of cases, which effectively urged good governance on the executive branch.
Dr. Ger, however, added that when it came to investigating national defense cases, the greatest challenge lied in the lack of transparency on decision-making of the armed forces. The CY had difficulty acquiring crucial information since much of them had been classified. For practice of external control, the CY would urge the Ministry of National Defense (MND) to review documents’ degree of secrecy and revise confidentiality. On the other hand, Dr. Ger suggested the MND’s Inspector General’s Office, which was established in January 2013, be steered by higher-level official to carry out better work of internal control.
Dr. Sheree Ma and Dr. Teresa Yin echoed Dr. Ger’s remarks. They both emphasized that the CY is indispensible for ensuring government integrity in that it, by law, is eligible to investigate official documents and files and, moreover, has the power of proposing corrective measures and impeachment. Thus, the CY shall continue to actively exercise powers to combat corruption and promote clean governance.
TI published its first report of Government Defense Anti-corruption Index (GDAI), which ranked Taiwan at level B, alongside the United Kingdom and the United States, on January 29, 2013, in Taipei, and visited the CY on the same day.
Dr. Pyman was accompanied by Member of TI Defense and Security Programme David Hook and Executive director TI Taiwan Kevin Yeh to visit the CY.