During the second election debate last Saturday, President Chen Shui-bian (
Certainly, Chen made numerous campaign promises during the 2000 election -- including stipends for senior citizens, farmers and fishermen. But Chen has made relatively few campaign promises this time. Being the incumbent, he knows the government's budget constraints and the difficulty of delivering on extravagant promises. Besides, his government's NT$500 billion national construction budget is still blocked by the opposition at the Legislative Yuan.
Lien has made a large number of promises -- an 18 percent preferential interest rate on deposits made by retired workers, a reduction of the military conscription period from the current 20 months to three months and an increase in the proportion of female legislators up to 30 percent, among others. Lien even boasted that Taiwan has the defensive capability to win the initial stage of a cross-strait war. Most of these policies are naive, while others are plain foolishness.
The government in the past granted a preferential 18 percent interest rate for servicemen, civil servants and teachers because these people had relatively low salaries. Over the decades, however, the policy created a heavy financial burden for the government and finally had to be terminated. Now only those who retired before 1995 still enjoy the special interest rate. Now, extending this largesse -- which in the past was only available to a small portion of society -- to retired workers will certainly cause a financial burden far beyond what the government coffers can endure. The policy is also unfair to other sectors of society. Apart from tax hikes, there is no way the government can pay for this perk. It is a typical pork-barrel policy, but the people have not been fooled. According to an opinion poll, 46 percent of respondents oppose the policy and 31 percent support it.
In the eyes of most Taiwanese men, serving in the military is a waste of time. Cutting it down to three months will create a serious national security burden. First of all, the purpose and usefulness of three months of military training needs to be clearly defined. Secondly, the entire strategic deployment, troop structure and personnel allocations need to be readjusted. Thirdly, large numbers of officers in command positions need to be laid off as the armed forces shrink. This will have a huge impact on the military and pose a major challenge for society as well.
China far outnumbers Taiwan in terms of weapons that can be used in pre-emptive strikes -- missiles, fighter jets and submarines. Qualitative superiority is all Taiwan has. Lien said Taiwan can win in the initial fight against China. We wonder what he bases his ideas on. China can, as Mao Zedong (毛澤東) said, sacrifice a tenth of its population. How many lives must Taiwan sacrifice in a first strike? Besides, Taiwan is gradually losing its qualitative superiority due to the opposition's obstruction of arms procurement budgets.
If Lien is truly concerned about Taiwan's security, he should tell his party's legislators to support the arms procurement budgets. He should also vote "yes" for both referendum questions on March 20.
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