There are times when a government’s performance can be so wretched and wrong-headed that even its foes might draw a line and, for the sake of everyone’s welfare, encourage officials to do a better job rather than tear them to pieces on the legislative floor.
After the dismal performance of top health officials in the last weeks, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must be wondering if that time is approaching.
For the moment, it has not taken much pressure from the DPP to see damaging fallout from the melamine debacle. The just-inked resignation of minister of health Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁) virtually wrote itself, as did the premature letters of farewell from some of his subordinates.
The DPP now hopes to capitalize on the Department of Health’s woes by mobilizing supporters in another rally in Taipei, possibly to coincide with the arrival of a Chinese envoy on a bridge-building journey with Taiwan’s pro-China government. Such a rally would happily merge growing anger at slovenly Chinese health and safety standards and erratic Taiwanese inspection standards with the DPP’s higher goal of painting the Chinese mission as fundamentally hostile to the political interests of every Taiwanese.
The danger lies in the DPP tarnishing an entire sector of the Taiwanese workforce with language that is rightfully directed at inept managers. The party will do no one any good by adopting the tactics of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) while it was in opposition and smearing anyone and anything within range, especially people in the medical and public service sectors who strive to be conscientious, innovative and hard-working.
Indeed, when things are put into perspective, the hapless antics of Taiwan’s health bureaucracy draw a degree of sympathy compared with the dreadful show being put on by Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) and some of his senior Cabinet colleagues.
The sight of Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) embracing the wife of the alleged would-be assassin of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) after she tried to prostrate herself before her in classic imperial style was warning enough: Wang stupidly embraced a likely plaintiff in a case that the previous government’s investigators declared closed.
Wang, who has a vested interest in prosecuting the case against Chen, and who has already displayed a knack for compromising the fairness of legal proceedings, lacks the slightest understanding of the importance of a justice minister being — and appearing to be — neutral.
This kind of amateur-hour conduct brings the government into disrepute no less substantially than disagreement, inconsistency and tardiness on health issues. The difference is that if the legal system is not seen as impartial, then a person who wished to sue the government — even over health matters — would suddenly have every reason to be skeptical that a just verdict would follow, despite the fact that health is not so easily politicized.
As the days wear on, it is clear that the premier is unable to manage his Cabinet, and that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is so obsessed with cross-strait identity issues that he cannot understand the rot that is compromising his appointments.
For its part, the DPP can make a start in recovering some of the goodwill that it lost by making intelligent choices in what it attacks and whom it counsels. Taiwan does not deserve another opposition party that prefers indiscriminate attacks to careful, pinpoint discussion of what is going wrong, why and who is responsible.
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS