Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌), who recently resigned from his position as a member of the supervisory board of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), said in an interview last Monday that since the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the government has displayed a skewed understanding of the word “government.”
“It seems that only the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] government qualifies as a government, while the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] government was not a government,” he said.
As a result, members of the TFD, the Overseas Chinese Culture and Education Foundation and the Council for Hakka Affairs have been replaced for a variety of reasons, Hsiao said.
“I think this is frightening,” Hsiao said.
In response to speculation that the government wanted former KMT legislator Huang Teh-fu (黃德福) to take over as president of the TFD, Hsiao said no one would raise an eyebrow as long as a suitable person was chosen as replacement, but that in his view, “Huang is too partisan.”
Hsiao said what he found frightening about the government was that “while it criticizes others, it turns around and does exactly the same thing that it is criticizing others for doing.”
The Council for Hakka Affairs used to hold a meeting every two months, he said, but since Ma became president, the meetings are often skipped.
With new council members set to be appointed next week, Hsiao said the government’s approach to handling groups like the council “is to avoid holding regular meetings and then appointing new members once the terms are up.”
Hsiao said the Overseas Chinese Commission’s Overseas Chinese Culture and Education Foundation had also replaced board members. Although it was within the government’s rights to appoint board members, he questioned whether the new members had sufficient expertise.
Hsiao said he suspected that although the government claimed the changes were being made to improve the groups, they were in fact politically motivated.
There were also reports that the Foundation for Excellent Journalism Award, the National Culture and Arts Foundation and the Public Television Service — which all cooperated well with the previous government — have had problems applying for funds since Ma took office and that lower officials were afraid to contact the Ma government.
Hsiao said he felt these were the most objectionable aspects of the Ma administration.
Despite the fact that there had been a change in government, cooperation with all these organizations should still be possible, but the present government refuses to cooperate with any organization that had good relations with the former DPP government.
“This is very serious,” he said. “And this must come from the top, with lower-level staff afraid to question it.”
Hsiao said the Ma government is active when it comes to replacing people, but passive when it comes to cooperation. It uses these two approaches to deal with agencies, foundations and other green organizations in the DPP periphery, he added.
“This is very unprofessional,” he said. “They have completely misunderstood the fact that there is only one government. It seems only the KMT government qualifies as a government, and that when someone else is in power, they are [something different].”
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Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but