When a government is facing a crisis of governance, it is a sign that its administrative measures are ineffective; when a government faces a crisis of trust, it is a reflection of the obstacles to its policy implementation. However, when a government is facing a fundamental moral crisis, the result will be the total collapse of its legitimacy. Unfortunately, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is facing all three types of crisis. The tragedy is that not only are Ma, Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) incapable of resolving these crises, they are also constantly adding fuel to the fire.
The back and forth on the implementation of the capital gains tax on securities transactions is a reflection of constant flip-flopping on policy grounded in incompetence. The dispute over whether to continue the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) should have resulted in a policy debate based on safety, security, environmental and energy issues, but instead the government managed to further intensify public distrust by attempting to run over the majority of the public’s opposition to nuclear power through a political scheme based on a clever application of the unreasonable Referendum Act (公投法).
The government also tried to resort to closed-door dealings to amend the law to decriminalize the expenditure of public funds on alcohol in hostess bars by elected officials, and although it had to back off and defuse the situation at the last minute after a strong backlash, it had already managed to elevate the crisis to the point where it had lost all moral legitimacy. It will now be very difficult for the government to do anything to improve the situation.
When a government whose popularity, credibility and support ratings keep plumbing new depths is faced with these three crises, it goes without saying that it should abandon its arrogance, start listening to the public and restrict its abuse of power. However, this has not been the preferred route of the Ma administration. Instead, it has chosen to continue to hide behind propaganda and large numbers of bodyguards, to duck growing social criticism and to violently suppress protesters, bringing the specter of authoritarianism back to Taiwan.
From the unjust demolition of people’s houses, despite promises to the contrary, to the opaque, closed-door negotiations over the cross-strait service trade agreement, Ma, Wu and Jiang have lost all credibility. When they fell so far that they resorted to misusing the national security forces to illegally arrest National Chengchi University professor Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮) for calmly protesting against the government, they formally sounded the alarm against the call to “bring down the government.”
The only thing that now keeps the Ma administration in power is the high constitutional threshold for recalls: The protection of the ruling party’s legislators makes it impossible for the public to initiate a recall procedure. To turn the dissatisfaction and anger throughout civil society into concrete action for real change, it is necessary to turn to the legislature. During the extraordinary legislative session that is just about to start, legislators must give serious consideration to the question of whether they are on the side of Ma’s opinion or on the side of public opinion so that we can decide whether we should initiate recall procedures for our legislators to enable us to elect a group of public representatives that really want to stand together with civil society.
Huang Kuo-chang is an associate research professor at the Academia Sinica’s Institutum Iurisprudentiae.
Translated by Perry Svensson
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press