May 12 was the day for Premier Yu Shyi-kun's Cabinet to resign.
With luck, it will also turn out to mark the beginnings
of clear and definite political accountability.
During his first term in
office, President Chen Shui-bian (
Therefore, he first built a"government for all the people" and appointed upstanding members of society in key positions while stressing
bipartisan cooperation.
But the government's performance was a disappointment, with both former premier Tang Fei (
Obviously, an administration departing from the normal course of party politics and seeking an alliance with the social elite did not work.
This time, after the Cabinet reshuffle, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has become a "genuine" pan-green regime.
DPP members have taken most of the important posts, while recruitments from professional society -- such
as Lin Hsin-i (
premier and the chairman of the Cabinet's Council for Economic Planning and Development -- have left their posts. The DPP has now gained complete control of the government's executive branch.
Opportunities
On the one hand, this provides opportunities for the pan-green camp to cultivate talent, as many party members in their 30s or 40s have been appointed Cabinet members.
On the other hand, this is the beginning of complete political accountability. The DPP government has to return to the principle of ruling the nation with honesty and credibility, and turn its campaign promises into policies, so as to become a mature regime.
At the same time, the establishment of a pan-green Cabinet is helpful in normalizing party politics.
Thus, politics will be transformed into a specialized profession, where social elites and intellectuals may not come and go as they wish, as they once did.
A party is not only a campaign machine aimed at gaining power but also an apparatus for cultivating political talent. Changings of the guard within a party are necessary if a party wants to maintain power in the long term.
Partisanship
This is a goal toward which the pan-green camp has worked hard, and is also an area that
is developing into a crisis for
the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Therefore, partisanship in a ruling party is a good thing: It allows voters to clearly predict changes in policy that might be brought about by a change in power. This enables voters to make objective comparisons and rational decisions.
Moreover, it is desirable for politicians to have a clearly distinguishable party affiliation and ideology so that there will be no room for them to resort to political opportunism. They must uphold their ideals and try to enter the talent pool of their parties in order to have a chance to get involved in political affairs.
That being the case, politicians with an identifiable party affiliation and ideology will have less room for opportunism than will neutral members of society.
Hsu Yung-ming is an assistant research fellow at the Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy at Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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