Take China for Example

Last month the Chinese government announced that it was going to purge it’s government of corruption by first removing any and all public officials who have in the past committed adultery or is currently keeping a mistress.

This move was motivated by recent media pressure showing corruption on many levels of the public service. "As anti-corruption pressure of the central government is increasing, the number of direct corruption of the executives is reducing, but the indirect corruption (by the family or the mistresses) increases", says Hu Xingdou, specialist in the Chinese questions and professor of the Institute of technology of Peijing. (rough translation)

Interesting how sexual immorality is seen as a root cause of corruption in the Chinese government. This effort by the chinese is an attempt to remove the curse of corruption and restore the faith of the people.

It’s easy for us to peer across the pond and point fingers to our global neighbours, whilst lounging in front of a TV with a false sense of security at the state of our political processes. It was not too long ago that our press core were hammering the past Liberal government over “Adscam”. Interesting after a few trails how we Canadians tend to allow our memories to fade.
Maybe we trust the conservatives, but we should always hold our government officials to higher standards.

But is sexual immorality connected to other forms of corruption, or should we be ‘god-like’ and treat all sin as equally offensive? Maybe we can learn of our communist neighbours.

Former US President Bill Clinton would not have fared well at the hands of the Chinese if he held a post as a National Postmaster, would he? There would not have been millions of dollars spent on public hearings, and a huge amount of airtime examining a stained dress. Clinton would have been purged from the process as he should have been. Did Clinton's sexual romping damage the US government? I say it did.

Clinton’s romp resulted in “Filegate”, a misuse of FBI files to compile a list of democratic enemies. Of course, unlike the Chinese, that was swept under the carpet. The same year Clinton was on his knees, the United States campaign finance controversy arose where twenty-two people were eventually convicted for fraud or for funneling Asian funds into the United States elections.

A number of the convictions came against longtime Clinton-Gore friends and political appointees. It was “TeamsterGate” that exposed Clinton’s 1996 campaign money funneling between his campaign fund and the campaign to reelect the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

In all, the Clinton administration had sixteen scandals to deal with, all that were eventually quelled in an effort to ‘save the american image’. Maybe the US of A should instigate the ‘Chinese Corruption Purge Policy’. By the looks of things it may have saved the Americans some grief. But what of Canada? In our case, where there is fire do we have smoke?

I truly hope not, but in light of the fact that PM Harper’s weak Anti-Corruption Bill the Federal Accountability Act (Bill C-2) has done nothing to make us feel protected from the hands of our leaders, I would suggest that the Chinese solution be at least considered.

Cigar anyone?