Is our Control Yuan needed?

President Chen Shui-bian suspended the Control Yuan in 2005, after the Legislative Yuan had refused to act on his nominations of ombudsmen. When Wang Chien-hsuan, a former minister of finance, was made president of the Control Yuan last year, he called his bunch of ombudsmen a group of “tigers with dentures.” He promised not to investigate trivial cases. The watchdogs would guard against gross government irregularities and bite with their plated teeth, he vowed. What that means is that no severe punishment can be meted out. They haven't.

Instead, sixteen of them went on a junket last March. They wished to find out why the Taiwan Railway Administration, whose employees are semi-public functionaries, has been losing money. The railroad service was asked to make arrangements for their trip from Kaohsiung to Taitung aboard its luxury train. Consequently, a special express train was made up to accommodate the ombudsmen and government officials who escorted them. Of course, the train was exclusive. There were no other passengers. For that one run the TRA spent NT$42,000, while the 16 ombudsmen conducting their official investigation paid their combined fare of NT$6,000. The money-losing government enterprise incurred an additional loss of NT$36,000. Later, the ombudsmen said they would make it up.

The new loss is minuscule, compared with millions upon millions of dollars the railroad service has been losing year after year. But it hasn't ever occurred to our junket-loving ombudsmen, who have no reason whatsoever for an on-the-spot inspection, that their trip and those of many other government officials concerned are one of the causes of the fast-accumulating loss on the part of the service, which used to make money in the 1950s and the 1970s.

As a matter of fact, no investigation is necessary to acquire an understanding of why railroad operators are losing money. They have too many employees on their payroll whom they can't dismiss. Their business is down. There is increasingly keen competition against bus and airline companies as well as the even-bigger loser High Speed Railroad Corporation. It's simply impossible for the TRA to break even.

And what is it that the ombudsmen are looking into? A couple of trivial irregularities, at most. Whatever corrective measures they may propose won't substantially help the ailing TRA in any way.

We regret to say our ombudsmen are “paper tigers” that should be put to sleep.

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