From Chinese Press

Democracy no cure for corruption

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-07-13 09:08

Multi-party democracy is no panacea for overcoming graft, which is instead best tackled by getting ordinary people to report corrupt officials, People's Daily said on Monday.

"Looking back on the political development of the West, corruption has gone hand-in-hand with the establishment of the multi-party system," the newspaper wrote.

"In the 1990s, the main governing parties of many Western countries had corruption scandals," it added, in a part of the editorial called "Answering a question from web users".

Italy and the United States had serious corruption scandals over that period, it said.

"Some developing nations, after promoting multi-party systems, found that not only was the problem of corruption not resolved, it actually got more serious in some cases," the newspaper added.

In a 2008 list of the world's 10 most corrupt countries, nine had multi-party systems, it said.

"The facts prove that the Western multi-party system ... cannot prevent or solve the issue of corruption, and is not a panacea."

In China, "the masses are the main force to rely on to fight corruption and promote good government", the editorial said.

More than 70 percent of graft investigations came from tip-offs from ordinary people over the past few years, it added.

More efforts should be made to encourage people to report graft via the Internet, the newspaper said.