Cage power to stop looting by officials

Inmates sit on the floor during an inspection visit in the longterm sentence zone inside Klong Prem highsecurity prison in Bangkok,Thailand on July 12. Jorge Silva / Reuters

An official of the food and drug bureau in Huanggang, Central China's Hubei province, reportedly "confiscated" some 36 bottles of cooking oil from a local grocery in the name of "investigating flawed samples". He has been suspended and an investigation has been launched. Beijing News commented on Monday:

It is difficult to believe that a law enforcer acted like a gangster while doing his job and felt no shame in admitting it. Yet such is the case. Asked by the shop owner what right he had to commit such "theft", he responded with complete honesty: "Yes I am just looting and I am doing this in line with the law".

Preposterous as it sounds, "looting in accordance with the law" vividly and aptly describes what the Huanggang enforcer did－impounding a number of "dubious" commodities without the consent of the shop owner and without providing solid evidence of the "quality problems" of the commodities－in the name of further investigation.

Such gangster-style enforcement is in essence no different from any other form of corruption, as it embodies brazen abuse of public power.

For the crooked enforcer, the "confiscation" of some 36 bottles of cooking oil may not be a big deal compared with the public assets embezzled by the "big tigers", or senior corrupt officials.

But such an unclad disrespect for procedural legitimacy and enforcement restrictions certainly highlight the need to put public power in an institutional cage.