The appointment Yilan County Commissioner Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) as minister of the Council of Agriculture marked a high point for Yilan County.
An atypical self-made man in Taiwanese politics, Lin is not a descendant of politicians and, having joined the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1998, has no long-standing status as a party operative.
Lin’s ascension to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inner circle is owed primarily to his administrative prowess and political success in Yilan, having repeatedly ranked among the nation’s most popular elected officials in surveys.
Photo: Chiang Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
Lin also impressed observers with his electoral performance.
In 2014, he was re-elected county commissioner in a landslide election with 63.95 percent of vote, the highest share of the ballot for any candidate participating in an election as a county commissioner or special municipality mayor that year.
Lin, 56, was born in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東) into an agricultural family, which he worked into his public image, reminding voters that he used to collect neighborhood sewage for the family’s plot of land.
After being honorably discharged from military service, Lin worked as an insurance agent and later passed the civil service exam to become a borough warden in Yilan in 1988.
The following year, Lin was appointed the head of the city’s waste management amid a municipal crisis.
Overflowing garbage had overwhelmed the county office headquarters and Lin successfully negotiated with the military for the use of its bases for temporary waste storage.
In 1994, Lin became the Luodong secretary-general and in 1998 was recruited to the DPP by invitation of its then-chairman, Lin I-hsiung (林義雄).
Lin’s political career began to take off in 2001, when he successfully ran for mayor of Luodong.
In 2009, Lin campaigned for the position of Yilan County commissioner and carried with him a briefcase belonging to former Yilan County commissioner Chen Ding-nan (陳定南), figuratively claiming the popular commissioner’s mantle.
Lin was re-elected in 2014.
In 2012, Lin was a speaker at an event following Tsai’s then-unsuccessful presidential bid to thank her supporters. Lin became choked up on stage and could not speak, which Tsai acknowledged by patting his back.
Lin’s ministerial appointment has not been universally applauded, as his decision to bolster agricultural land-use regulations and raise taxes on nominal agricultural properties led to the most notable political spat during his leadership of Yilan.
“It does not follow that a commissioner from an agricultural county would know what is good for farming communities. Lin’s determination to protect farmland is open to question,” farmers’ rights advocate and Land and Rice Workshop founder Wu Chia-lin (吳佳玲) said, panning Lin’s appointment.
Wu said that Lin approved more dual-use constructions in Yilan than other any other commissioner and no dual-use buildings had been fined for breaking county rules.
In the worst case, asking Lin to save farmland would lead to the maintenance of a “status quo,” Wu said, calling on Lin to “take real action” to preserve agriculture.
“There is not going to be any agriculture without farmland and there is no functioning country without agriculture,” Wu said.
Lin had “often flip-flopped” in his commitment to protect farming communities and frequently used flaws in the central government’s regulations as a scapegoat to “shift blame from himself,” Yilan Guardian Workshop founder Lee Pao-lien (李寶蓮) said.
Hsieh Chih-kuai (謝志旭), director of a farmers’ cooperative based in Yilan’s Sansing Township (三星) ,said that while the implementation of Lin’s policies to conserve land for agricultural use was flawed, his efforts to promote organic farming should not be denied.
“I hope Lin will continue to implement farmers’ insurance, increase the value of the agricultural sector’s output and help farmers to secure a good life for themselves,” Hsieh said.
Chen Shuai-chih (陳帥之), the first of Taiwan’s young farmers to receive honors from the Council of Agriculture’s program to honor achievements in agriculture, said he supports Lin’s appointment and Lin should be recognized for his efforts to promote organic and sustainable agriculture.
Chen Shuai-chih said he took up farming in Yilan after migrating from New Taipei City five years ago and praised Yilan for being the first administrative division to promote organic food, particularly putting one organic meal per week on public-school menus.
Under Lin, Yilan had doubled the land under “organic” cultivation for several years consecutively, which is the highest number achieved by any county or special municipality-level administration, Chen Shuai-chih said.
Systematically low income for farmers resulted in the graying of the nation’s farming communities, Chen Shuai-chih said, adding that Lin’s priority should be to increase farmers’ income to attract younger workers to the sector.
Additional reporting by Chiang Chih-hsiung and Lin Chin-lun
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS