Anybody who believed the findings of the Control Yuan’s investigation into who was responsible for the infamous decision initially to refuse foreign material aid in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot will probably also be waiting up on Thursday night hoping to glimpse Santa Claus and his reindeer.
Wednesday’s report — which reads like a student’s excuse for not doing homework — censured the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) for issuing the refusal while putting the blame for the decision to refuse offers of foreign disaster rescue expertise at the feet of Director-General of the National Fire Administration Huang Chi-min (黃季敏), deputy commander of the Central Emergency Operation Center when the typhoon struck.
While Huang may indeed — as has been reported — have suggested that no foreign rescue aid was required, it is stretching the boundaries of belief to suggest that the MOFA then issued a memo to the nation’s embassies and representative offices without getting the go-ahead from a more senior government official.
While former deputy foreign minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) became the sacrificial lamb over the memo, the real decision maker has managed to remain hidden. This is scandalous as the delay in the arrival of foreign rescue aid without doubt contributed to deaths that could have otherwise been avoided.
The Control Yuan’s investigation and subsequent corrective measures can be seen as the government’s attempt to close the file on the Morakot disaster. They suggest that no government official will actually be held accountable for what was a gross dereliction of duty by government officials on so many different levels.
The government watchdog has once again failed to perform to its remit.
If the Control Yuan was serious about its work and if its members actually felt any remorse for the hundreds of deaths caused by Morakot it should be finding out why — if its conclusions are to believed — such low-level staffers were allowed to make such a crucial decision, impeaching those responsible and making sure that it never happens again. While doing so, it could also investigate why, if Hsia was so negligent in his duties, he was then given a cushy job as the nation’s representative to Indonesia and whether this was a pay off for him taking the fall over the memo.
But one shouldn’t expect too much from the Control Yuan. After all, this was the same body that initially refused to impeach repugnant former Government Information Office official Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), only doing so after a public outcry. This is also the same Control Yuan that found a lowly engineer responsible for the Maokong Gondola fiasco.
While the idea of the Control Yuan has noble ambitions, Taiwan’s fiercely polarized political climate means that those ideals have been corrupted. This is why the Control Yuan sat idle for more than three years after former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) nominees were stonewalled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-dominated legislature and why three DPP-affiliated members nominated by Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) were rejected last year.
This is also why the current body and its majority of pan-blue sympathizers cannot effectively deal with accusations of government impropriety, no matter how serious they may be.
Until this problem is remedied, we can look forward to more of the same from the government’s toothless watchdog.
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