After Premier Su Tseng-chang's (
But few people have noticed that there's another concern which makes this personnel change seem even worse -- the lack of corporate governance.
In their struggle to grab control of the company, neither Fan nor Huang wanted to give an inch. Ever since their appointments in October 2003, policies they implemented ran counter to each other. They were primarily selected for the positions as a part of the Chen Shui-bian (
But the most worrisome issue is the obvious lack, over the last three years, of accountable records kept by Council of Agriculture, Financial Supervisory Commission and Executive Yuan officials responsible for supervising the company's management team and ensuring shareholders' rights and interests.
Some people attributed this insufficient supervision to infighting between different political factions within the government. Others said it was due to the government's shrinking ownership in Taiwan Fertilizer after the government sold another 20 percent stake last year, reducing its holdings to 24 percent, with foreign investors owning about 47 percent.
Theoretically, Taiwan Fertilizer has been a private company since 1999. The reason that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government could select both Fan and Huang to manage the company in 2003 was because the government still enjoyed a majority 44 percent stake at the time. In this respect, there's no difference between the DPP and its predecessor Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT): They both like to put their own people in posts at state-controlled companies in order to serve their own political will.
If appointed candidates prove their ability to guide state-controlled companies to prosperity, the government could better legitimize its political dominance. But the selection of those candidates ran counter to principles of good corporate governance, as they were widely criticized for their inexperience and lack of industry-specific backgrounds.
Consider the example of the Taiwan Sugar Corp, which has had four chairmen in the last five years. The company has continued to suffer losses and has only managed to cut its losses by selling its massive land holdings.
In the case of Taiwan Fertilizer, the Executive Yuan last week appointed Lee Ching-lung (
It might seem that Lee's horticultural background makes him an appropriate choice. But will the reshuffle at Taiwan Fertilizer lead to a personnel selection process that would allow the most suitable candidates to take the helm of state-controlled companies?
The government's relatively weak stakeholding in the company has become a potentially sensitive issue in view of the annual shareholders' meeting in October. Will the government implement better corporate governance to help the company seek appropriate external candidates to serve on the board, and thus safeguard the company's most valuable land assets?
It's not a simple task. But if the government can achieve it, it would mean a lot for the firm's corporate governance and for the country's broader democratic development.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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