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Stamping out scandalous official gluttony at public trough
By Ni Tao |
February 6, 2012, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN a rare move, People's Daily devoted a page on Tuesday to several readers' letters lambasting lavish official banquets for which the public is billed.
One letter cites a banquet where there were 10 local subordinates playing host to only six visiting superiors, to "properly show their hospitality and respect." And that hospitality led to an exorbitant bill.
Another reads that official banquet is a broad term that includes possible after-meal spending on gifts, leisure, massage or even prostitutes. And some officials habitually obtain reimbursement of costs of their private meals as ostensibly incurred for "business reasons," says another.
None of this misbehavior, or zui shang fu bai ("corruption through the mouth"), as the paper calls it, is unfamiliar to me.
My father attended an alumni reunion last month in a suburban district of Shanghai, held there because an alumnus, a deputy governor of that particular district, generously paid for all the guests' accommodation and meals - with taxpayers' money, of course.
Wining and dining
And because I have friends working in government, I get to hear more rumors of officials' wining and dining than most people do. One friend recently told me that his boss, usually the last to arrive at work and first to leave, became exceptionally busy at year's end, for he was invited to one banquet after another. "These days he is literally swimming in alcohol," I recall him saying.
As official wining and dining is increasingly resented, it seems that outlawing it is a natural choice and would be widely applauded. People's Daily published a commentary alongside the readers' letters, arguing for a legal deterrent against "corruption through the mouth" as soon as possible.
Broaching a proposal is easy, the tricky part lies always in how to turn it into reality. Besides, it is in fact not so original. In a country where official banquets represent, according to some estimates, as high as 30 percent of already high fiscal expenditure, there were calls long ago to trim banquets funded by public money. And it's surprising such pleas came from a "beneficiary" of such feasting.
Zhao Chengzhong, a deputy of the state legislature (National People's Congress), in 2009 proposed criminalizing "official profligacy." A renegade from the "banquet culture," Zhao said he was at once a victim and perpetrator, having feted others and been feted himself.
His proposal didn't get too far, which attests to the difficulty of banning extravagant official meals. I believe the authorities are serious about tackling the issue. The problem is not a matter of resolve, rather, it's a technical one.
Even if a special law on official banquet were drafted and passed, it would probably be ineffectual in netting offenders. Most corrupt officials who were sacked over misuse of public funds for private comfort were thrown in the spotlight only by accident, or bad luck.
Officials dining at public expense sometimes do get caught with their pants down, but few are punished. One of the unfortunates was Fu Pinghong, ex-head of a hospital in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, who was convicted in 2009 of corruption charges - including splurging public money on meal. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail.
Fu's case is one of the very few precedents of officials falling from grace over their gluttony. However, it demonstrates that we don't need one more legal weapon to tame those fat cats.
We already have myriad anti-corruption laws, but as the saying goes, the law does not penalize the masses. Even if there is a sword of Damocles dangling over the heads of corrupt cadres, it seldom falls, and if it does, only a few pay the price.
Our Party is determined to stamp out "corruption through the mouth."
Although there is no mainland ombudsman such as Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption, the Party's Disciplinary Commission is a no less fearsome watchdog. It has spelled out clear rules on what a standard official meal should comprise - four courses and a soup.
Of course, such rules lack flexibility and are difficult to enforce. Thus, circumventing it is the norm in a society where people have to accord their betters full honors and pomp at dinner tables in hope of getting a promotion. So throwing a banquet without Moutai liquor or abalone can be political suicide.
Countermeasures
Then do the Party watchdog's limits on meals mean anything?
Where there are measures from the top, there are countermeasures at the bottom. Officials have outdone each other in outsmarting the rules, by, for instance, serving expensive viands on oversize platters, so that the number of dishes stays within the limit of four.
The effective check on wining and dining, it appears, is not more laws, but more transparency. Authorities in general are reluctant to publicize their budgets for public scrutiny.
If officials are more forthcoming about disclosing their budgets, lavish banquets will less often make the news. Yet openness for them is anathema. Dreading of exposure, many cunning officials now dine in remote, exclusive restaurants to hide their extravagancy, making it still harder for the public to monitor their behavior.
As a matter of fact, openness is not just good for taxpayers' money, but for those administering it in the public interest. Heart disease and high blood pressure, induced in part by excessive banqueting and drinking, have been the top killers of officials over the years. Publicizing budgets will help improve the health of our civil servants, by letting society consult them on healthy eating.
One letter cites a banquet where there were 10 local subordinates playing host to only six visiting superiors, to "properly show their hospitality and respect." And that hospitality led to an exorbitant bill.
Another reads that official banquet is a broad term that includes possible after-meal spending on gifts, leisure, massage or even prostitutes. And some officials habitually obtain reimbursement of costs of their private meals as ostensibly incurred for "business reasons," says another.
None of this misbehavior, or zui shang fu bai ("corruption through the mouth"), as the paper calls it, is unfamiliar to me.
My father attended an alumni reunion last month in a suburban district of Shanghai, held there because an alumnus, a deputy governor of that particular district, generously paid for all the guests' accommodation and meals - with taxpayers' money, of course.
Wining and dining
And because I have friends working in government, I get to hear more rumors of officials' wining and dining than most people do. One friend recently told me that his boss, usually the last to arrive at work and first to leave, became exceptionally busy at year's end, for he was invited to one banquet after another. "These days he is literally swimming in alcohol," I recall him saying.
As official wining and dining is increasingly resented, it seems that outlawing it is a natural choice and would be widely applauded. People's Daily published a commentary alongside the readers' letters, arguing for a legal deterrent against "corruption through the mouth" as soon as possible.
Broaching a proposal is easy, the tricky part lies always in how to turn it into reality. Besides, it is in fact not so original. In a country where official banquets represent, according to some estimates, as high as 30 percent of already high fiscal expenditure, there were calls long ago to trim banquets funded by public money. And it's surprising such pleas came from a "beneficiary" of such feasting.
Zhao Chengzhong, a deputy of the state legislature (National People's Congress), in 2009 proposed criminalizing "official profligacy." A renegade from the "banquet culture," Zhao said he was at once a victim and perpetrator, having feted others and been feted himself.
His proposal didn't get too far, which attests to the difficulty of banning extravagant official meals. I believe the authorities are serious about tackling the issue. The problem is not a matter of resolve, rather, it's a technical one.
Even if a special law on official banquet were drafted and passed, it would probably be ineffectual in netting offenders. Most corrupt officials who were sacked over misuse of public funds for private comfort were thrown in the spotlight only by accident, or bad luck.
Officials dining at public expense sometimes do get caught with their pants down, but few are punished. One of the unfortunates was Fu Pinghong, ex-head of a hospital in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, who was convicted in 2009 of corruption charges - including splurging public money on meal. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail.
Fu's case is one of the very few precedents of officials falling from grace over their gluttony. However, it demonstrates that we don't need one more legal weapon to tame those fat cats.
We already have myriad anti-corruption laws, but as the saying goes, the law does not penalize the masses. Even if there is a sword of Damocles dangling over the heads of corrupt cadres, it seldom falls, and if it does, only a few pay the price.
Our Party is determined to stamp out "corruption through the mouth."
Although there is no mainland ombudsman such as Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption, the Party's Disciplinary Commission is a no less fearsome watchdog. It has spelled out clear rules on what a standard official meal should comprise - four courses and a soup.
Of course, such rules lack flexibility and are difficult to enforce. Thus, circumventing it is the norm in a society where people have to accord their betters full honors and pomp at dinner tables in hope of getting a promotion. So throwing a banquet without Moutai liquor or abalone can be political suicide.
Countermeasures
Then do the Party watchdog's limits on meals mean anything?
Where there are measures from the top, there are countermeasures at the bottom. Officials have outdone each other in outsmarting the rules, by, for instance, serving expensive viands on oversize platters, so that the number of dishes stays within the limit of four.
The effective check on wining and dining, it appears, is not more laws, but more transparency. Authorities in general are reluctant to publicize their budgets for public scrutiny.
If officials are more forthcoming about disclosing their budgets, lavish banquets will less often make the news. Yet openness for them is anathema. Dreading of exposure, many cunning officials now dine in remote, exclusive restaurants to hide their extravagancy, making it still harder for the public to monitor their behavior.
As a matter of fact, openness is not just good for taxpayers' money, but for those administering it in the public interest. Heart disease and high blood pressure, induced in part by excessive banqueting and drinking, have been the top killers of officials over the years. Publicizing budgets will help improve the health of our civil servants, by letting society consult them on healthy eating.
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