Ma Ying-jeou starts party reform in earnest

The Kuomintang, launched by Dr. Sun Yat-sen who founded the Republic of China in 1912, is a Stalinist party. Its central standing committee, like the politburo of the former Soviet Russian Communist Party, is all powerful. The Chinese Communist Party, that rules China, also has a politburo, whose standing committee members run the government in Beijing.

Three days later, on Tuesday, Ma had two of the 32 members of his central standing committee ousted for buying votes to get elected. The party's disciplinary committee found them guilty of having sent red wine and salted mackerel in exchange for votes from members of its central committee. The disciplinarians disqualified the pair and pledged to continue investigating the alleged widespread election rigging. Anyone found to have committed bribery, the disciplinary committee threatens, would be disqualified as well. Ma fully supports the continuation of this probe.

On Thursday night, one of the remaining 30 members announced he would give up his seat on the committee, which he charged was corruptively elected. Chiu Yi, a lawmaker at large and the nemesis of former President Chen Shui-bian, made the announcement at an evening talk show on TVBS, starting a wave of mass resignation of central standing committee members, which culminated in their quitting en masse to pave the way for Chairman Ma to call a makeup election. The new party chairman presided over an emergency meeting of the committee on Monday to declare its demise and a new election, scheduled for November 14.

It's the party reform a la Ma the Mister Clean. Ma vowed to root out corruption, including vote-buying of course, when he was minister of justice from 1993 to 1996. He quit that job, for he couldn't fulfill his vow. A man of probity, Ma couldn't bear the stigma of being indicted for corruption in connection with misappropriations of his expense account while he was mayor of Taipei in 1998-2006. He resigned as chairman of the Kuomintang on the day he was formally charged by a Taipei district prosecutor in 2007 and declared candidacy for president. He was tried and finally absolved by the Supreme Court shortly after he won last year's presidential election.

One of his top campaign promises was to stamp out corruption not just in government but in his own party as well. It is vital for him to keep his promise. He ran for party leadership and took back the office he gave up more than two years ago. The makeup election of the nerve center of the Kuomintang is the first step taken by him to undertake the KMT's reformation into a totally clean and transparent party.

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