On Sept. 23, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said, "The Ministry of Finance is trying to destroy the farmers' and fishermen's associations by having commercial banks take over their credit units. If it acts recklessly on policy affecting the farmers' and fishermen's associations, the DPP will have to be careful of losing power." Presi-dent Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) responded by saying that "reform will continue even if it risks costing us power."
Chen's statement was inspiring and people from all walks of life sought to generate ideas on how the NT$1.05 trillion Financial Restructuring Fund should be used. Eventually, however, under pressure from a series of planned marches and protests by farmers and fishermen, the government decided to suspend the implementation of risk-management measures aimed at regulating the associations' credit units. That decision has brought a halt to the financial reform of the units.
In 1996, non-performing loans (NPL) extended by farmers' and fishermen's credit units totaled NT$72.3 billion. After six years, this has increased to NT$137 billion as of June this year. The NPL ratio was 8.57 percent in 1996, as opposed to 21.53 percent in June this year.
We will come to regret postponing grassroots financial reform if no action is taken soon.
The problem of financial reform was caused by the KMT administration's laissez-faire approach and procrastination, which it found beneficial in controlling local party factions.
The administration's decision to suspend the implementation of risk-management measures has halted some reforms that had already been set in motion.
The difficulty of grassroots financial reform lies in the complex ties between the farmers' and fishermen's associations and political factions, not from the implementation of financial measures. We believe that it is impossible to reform every aspect of the system; trying to make everyone happy will result in hypocrisy. We can only try our best to allay the opposition of vested interests. In the face of opposition from the "targeted groups," we should neither hesitate nor flinch from our mission.
Grassroots financial reform is irrelevant to politics. The grass-roots financial institutions are a timebomb that could trigger a financial crisis at any time. Their senior officials do not belong to any particular party or faction; they care only about pursuing their own interests.
In 2000, the people's disappointment with KMT reforms led to a change in government. Today, that same sense of disappointment has re-emerged. It is obvious that simple, vigorous reform does not necessarily result in loss of power. But the administration certainly risks losing power by advocating reform and then caving in to anti-reform protests.
Since the 2000 election, we, as founding members of the DPP, have felt increasingly powerless about the party's apparent abandonment of its past ideals and resolve.
Hong Chi-chang and Tuan Yi-kang are DPP legislators.
Translated by Grace Shaw
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
A report by the US-based Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday last week warned that China is operating illegal oil drilling inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙群島), marking a sharp escalation in Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. The report said that, starting in July, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp installed 12 permanent or semi-permanent oil rig structures and dozens of associated ships deep inside Taiwan’s EEZ about 48km from the restricted waters of Pratas Island in the northeast of the South China Sea, islands that are home to a Taiwanese garrison. The rigs not only typify
RSS