The Lienchiang County Government is superseding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by giving county residents prepaid transportation cards. Residents who travel to Fuzhou and spend money would be provided with discounts. In doing this, the government is voluntarily serving the CCP’s Taiwan Policy.
The Lienchiang County Government’s behavior severely infringes upon civil servants’ obligations toward and pledge of loyalty to Taiwan.
Lienchiang County’s budget last year was about NT$4.6 billion (US$142 million). If this amount were divided among Matsu’s 13,200 residents, each person would receive an average of NT$350,000. The Lienchiang County government has instead decided to help the CCP take control of the area, “selling” the people of Matsu to the CCP for a mere 300 Chinese yuan.
County governments are public entities. The tenets of civil service clearly stipulate that civil servants pledge their loyalty to our country . Despite the Lienchiang County government setting an illegal example, the County magistrate was elected by the public and should act according to the regulations that govern all civil servants.
Civil servants working under the county government have an even stronger obligation to abide by the law. They must not accept the government’s illegal instructions and do things that encroach on national interests.
In Taiwan, accounting and human affairs personnel are under the control of the central system. Thus, political units should fulfill the function of directing and supervising the government’s conduct. The Control Yuan should motion for the impeachment of Lienchiang’s civil servants.
The spirit of political autonomy lies in providing a place with the ability to handle its own general affairs. It enables administrative efficacy and independent handling of matters.
It is not meant to be a limitless expansion that extends beyond national borders. Nor is it meant to reach a point where administrative actions contravene national interests.
Chen Chi-nung is a political commentator.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS