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.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS