In February, former Executive Yuan director-general of personnel administration Chen Keng-chin (陳庚金) called on civil servants to “milk their jobs” and “goof around” as much as possible to drag down the government, but the nation’s chief executive, who should be the one most deeply insulted by Chen’s remark, said nothing.
Protesters opposing pension reforms, who call themselves “heroes,” have been turning to violence and seem determined to take the nation down with them if their demands are not met, yet when police officers responsible for maintaining public order saw some of their retired former seniors among the rioters, they stood to attention and saluted.
All the government’s talk of harshly punishing those who use violence is useless if the authorities appear so weak.
In November last year, a group of retired generals went on a friendly visit to an enemy nation, where they sat and listened to instructions from that nation’s head of state and stood in respect for its national anthem — common sense and the Ministry of Defense’s own definition will tell you which enemy country we are talking about.
Yet the commander-in-chief of Taiwan’s armed forces, who, again, should be the one most deeply insulted, had nothing to say.
Living in today’s Taiwan, one often gets the feeling that important elements of the nation have gotten out of control, and it is hard to tell whether anyone is actually in charge.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who was elected by a majority, seems to be growing more and more distant from the public. Sadly, the public’s impression of her is that whenever she makes a speech, be it on a big or small occasion and no matter whether her speech is long or short, she is always clutching a script from which she reads every word without ever raising her eyes.
When the speaker is uninspiring, the listener is uninspired. Tsai no longer shows any sign of her lively and friendly side, or of her wisdom as a prominent intellectual.
National leaders’ success might stem from their verbal skill, their charisma, their good governance or their closeness to the public. How can Tsai put this nation back on its feet, establish democratic discipline and foster decent public behavior? I humbly and sincerely offer the following suggestions:
First, the president should climb out of her ivory tower, meet people face to face and engage in frank and honest dialogue with her constituents.
Second, she should greatly reduce the amount of “state secrets.” The more secrets there are, the more doubtful and suspicious the public will be. Most “secrets” are really unnecessary and only serve to satisfy the sense of superiority of a handful of people who have a monopoly on the information.
The government should not just let the public know how things are, but also why things are the way they are. For example, what would be the harm in calling China “China” and Taiwan “Taiwan”?
What harm would it do if the legislature passed a normal referendum law like those of other democratic nations? What harm would come from freezing or abolishing the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission and the Taiwan Provincial Government? What negative impact could answering these questions possibly have on “national security”?
Third, Taiwan could set a trend by doing something even advanced democracies have not done. Tsai could expand on the examples of former US presidents Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” and Ronald Reagan’s weekly presidential broadcasts by having national TV and radio stations set aside an hour every Sunday for a dialogue between the president and the public.
She could use the first half hour to explain a specific policy in simple and familiar language, without a script, and in the second half hour two media personalities — different people each week — could pose positive and constructive questions. Straightforward answers to straightforward questions: Such a program might make the public feel that the president is among them instead of being a distant figure.
Peng Ming-min was an adviser to former president Chen Shui-bian.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the