It is unusual to find a government official who embraces with zeal the abolition of his entire department. Remember James Soong (宋楚瑜) and his Guinness World Record marathon sulk over the abolition of the utterly superfluous Taiwan Provincial Government. So hats off then to Arthur Iap (葉國興) for his support this week for the abolition of his job, director-general of the Government Information Office.
The problem with the GIO is that its function is obscure and has frequently been misused. In the repressive days of the KMT dictatorship, it was the official mouthpiece of that dictatorship and the censor of all that the dictatorship disapproved. It licensed media outlets based on their willingness to spout the KMT's highly distorted interpretation of reality, closed opposition media and, most notoriously, put spin on the government's brutally repressive policies and actions to make them more acceptable overseas. The GIO's usual tactic -- remember this was at the height of the Cold War -- was to paint anybody who disagreed in any way with the government's repression or its bizarre fantasy about being the real government of China or about the "national goal" of reunification as a communist and therefore a suitable target for repression.
These are the more obviously malign roles the GIO has played. But there are other areas in which it has done great damage, in particular as being one of the foremost exponents, both in Taiwan and in publications for overseas, of the idea that Taiwan is a traditional Confucian society and the last bastion of "Chinese culture." Of course China's scholar-gentry high culture played little part in the development of Taiwan's frontier society and the "last bastion" idea was more wishful thinking on the part of its mainland KMT colonial occupiers than anything reflective of the reality of Taiwan's interesting cultural mix.
That was then, as the saying goes. This is now.
So what does the GIO do today? Well that's the problem. Iap wants it to become something rather like the US' Federal Communications Commission. That is, he wants it to transform, from what used to be a propaganda and censorship organization to an impartial regulator of such things as spectrum allocation.
All this is a good idea and the sad thing is that it has taken so long for it to become a serious issue. The GIO in its current incarnation is a vestige of the old dictatorship. These days most people see it as relatively benign, but the fuss early last week about the idea of monitoring press content -- significantly enough, the DPP adoption of an old KMT habit -- shows that the GIO's function might not be as harmless as it currently appears. Best to get rid of it then.
If the government wants an official spokesman's office, create one and call it that. Nobody will then be under any misapprehension about what line it is peddling and why. And give it no censorship powers. Create a communications commission to allocate broadcast spectrum, and make sure there are enough independent commission members for it to be credibly free of political influence.
But answer this question as well: why has it taken three years of DPP government for a suggestion like this to get onto the political agenda? Yes, we have heard the idea raised before, but not in a context where anything is likely to be done about it. There are a number of other agencies left over from the martial law era which serve a rather ambiguous function in a democratic society which should also be either changed radically or abolished altogether. We get the impression that only now, after three years, has the DPP worked out what it might seek to do in government if it had the chance. Frankly, it's a bit late.
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