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In Japan, last year's "Black Mist" scandals, involving several Cabinet ministers, stirred such a public outcry that Premier Eisaku Sato felt it necessary, in his speech at the opening of the 53rd Diet session last December, to promise to "regain the confidence of the people" with "rigid investigations." In India, the national government was similarly goaded into commissioning a retired Supreme Court justice to investigate charges that Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed had vastly enriched himself and his family in his 16-year tenure as deputy prime minister, then prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Last month, after two years of hearings, the judge found that Bakshi had indeed been guilty of abusing his power, pointing out that the assets of the entire Bakshi family, which amounted to roughly $1,300 when he took office in 1947, had risen to about $2,000,000 when he resigned in 1963. But the judge's verdict was Asiatically restrained. Most of the money was not acquired by Bakshi himself, he noted, but by some 40 relatives, including his two wives, son and daughter, four brothers, cousins, in-laws and sons of in-laws, and derived "from what one might term natural advantages which those connected by ties of relationship or friendship with those in high office enjoy."
Baleful Light
Like all problems these days, the problem of corruption seems to fall under a particularly baleful light in South Viet Nam, with the critics more critical and the actors more selfconscious. Two weeks ago, General Nguyen Van Thieu signed a decree calling for death by hanging of any military or governmental employee caught taking bribes, abusing his office or stealing public funds. And he and Strongman Nguyen Cao Ky pledged an all-out attack on corruption if the voters keep the military government in office. Critics dismissed this as an election gimmick. But even Ky's civilian rivals conceded that corruption is a problem almost beyond politics. A recent military investigation ordered by Ky petered out after the fingering of a handful of junior officers. The highest-ranking officer accused, a colonel charged with accepting bribes from recruits who wanted to be excused from service, was merely demoted one rank and briefly placed under house arrest. "It is the system," sighed one official, "and it isn't going to be changed no matter who is elected and no matter what Ky says. It goes back to the mandarins. It will take a long, long time. To clean it up, we rely on the provincial authorities, and if they have a vested interest in it, then why are they going to stop it?"