Choosing Your Freinds

While in Taiwan, President Chen Shui-bian is probably in it deeper than his favourite TV star.  He has pledged to resign if he was linked to a recent scandal involving the Kaohsiung MRT project, which has already claimed the careers of two presidential advisers.As far as your correspondent can determine this falls into the realm of a Rapid Transit construction funded rip off. Chen’s government recently pledged that "All reform will begin with the government's own reform."He was responding to mounting public criticism about his administration's ethical integrity, sparked by the recent explosions of the various alleged scams plaguing the Kaohsiung mass rapid transit construction project.Chen is said to be is surrounded by people picked based on kinship or personal connections, not on their ability and character, they tend to be problematic. Another recent case of impropriety provoked a great deal of public anger and raised serious questions about President Chen's policy of rewarding people with government posts more for his loyalty than for his probity and uprightness.Chairman of China Steel Corporation, Lin Wen-yuan is a long, close confidant of the president. He recently made headlines after a ruling party lawmaker first revealed that Lin has been paid by the dominantly state-owned firm extraordinarily high salaries and dividends.He now gets a yearly NT$8 million in salary from the company, plus an approximate NT$40 million in dividends which in any language sounds impressive to your correspondent.Some feel it is unreasonable that those huge payments should have fully gone into his own pockets rather than to the state coffers.Now we wait to see how this ties in with the Triad and the self abusing TV superstar. With all that wonderful government cash floating around, the tough boys will soon separate it from the wankers in the game.