After former premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) announced his Cabinet would resign last week, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) immediately appointed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) secretary-general Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) to replace him and Taoyuan County commissioner Eric Chu (朱立倫) as vice premier. Liu’s decision to take political responsibility for the government’s poor relief work in the wake of Typhoon Morakot is praiseworthy. However, four issues pertaining to the appointment process of the new premier and his major tasks need to be discussed.
The first issue is the controversy over the violation of constitutional convention. Article 55 of the Constitution states that the premier shall be appointed by the president. Other Cabinet members should be appointed by the premier in accordance with the constitutional spirit of the Executive Yuan’s organizational design. Although former premiers always discussed the make-up of their Cabinet with the president, the right to name new members was still in their hands.
This time, however, the Presidential Office announced both the premier and vice premier, showing that the president appointed them both. Is this an attempt to restrain the premier? We don’t know. But whether it violated the spirit of the Constitution and political tradition must be thoroughly discussed. Otherwise, such an arbitrary act could be the start of the presidential destruction of the constitutional system.
The next issue is that several major budget plans were all proposed by Liu’s Cabinet, including the central government’s budget for the next fiscal year, the NT$120 billion (US$3.6 billion) for the Post-Typhoon Morakot Reconstruction Special Act (莫拉克颱風災後重建特別條例) and the budget for the expansion of domestic demand. These budget plans are both expensive and controversial. In particular, the money for the reconstruction act will be raised through public borrowing, which will add a heavy burden to the treasury. Government debt already stands at 33.82 percent of GNP, a figure close to the legal ceiling of 40 percent.
If the debt continues to grow like this, the nation’s sovereignty rating could be at risk. The budgets so rashly proposed by the former Cabinet should be returned to the new Cabinet for reconsideration so that limited resources can be distributed effectively.
The third issue is the question of whether the new Cabinet can carry out reform. The approval ratings for the previous Cabinet were quite low prior. Apart from the poor public image of several Cabinet members, this proves that many government policies need to be adjusted. The flooding and global financial crisis showed that the policies and performance of Liu’s Cabinet were dissatisfactory. The former caused great losses to human life and assets, while the latter caused the country to fall behind the rest of the region. Certain policies, such as the push for an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China, are rough and lack public support. As the year-end elections approach, the new Cabinet should not be a “campaign Cabinet.”
In light of the problems of the KMT’s rule in the past year, issues such as its pro-China stance, ignorance of public opinion, surging unemployment, the economic downturn, the widening income gap, post-typhoon reconstruction and even national land restoration, should all be reviewed and effective reform policies proposed.
Finally, Liu’s Cabinet resigned because of its poor relief work, which may have cost the lives of hundreds of people and caused huge economic losses. In the face of the A(H1N1) flu epidemic, we hope Wu’s Cabinet can learn from its predecessor’s errors. Every loophole must be closed so that no more lives are lost.
Taiwan Thinktank is an independent, nonprofit public policy research organization.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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