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Cooler heads needed on pensions

Public support is indispensable when pushing for reform. However, when vying for public support, politicians will often do whatever they can to manipulate an issue. As a result of appeals to emotion rather than reason, the goals of a given reform measure are sometimes distorted, and occasionally this may even result in a disastrous perversion of the original intention.

This is what has happened with the amendments to the retirement provisions for former presidents and vice presidents.

To give retired presidents a means of support and to avoid embarrassing the nation, the US Congress enacted the Former Presidents Act (FPA) in 1958. It provides former presidents with a lifelong pension and allowances, a staff member and suitable office space, and lifelong secret service protection. Former vice presidents, meanwhile, are only entitled to pensions. To take the example of former president George Bush, it costs the US government around US$700,000 a year to take care of the former president and vice president.

Following the example of the US' FPA, Taiwan also provides for its former presidents and vice presidents, but does so on an unbelievably lavish scale. This year the government has allotted NT$38 million (US$ 1.2 million), nearly twice as much as former presidents and vice presidents of the US receive, to take care of our former national leaders. Such treatment is so generous that it has led many to call for reform, but these calls have fallen foul of appeals to populist sentiment.

The goal of the US' FPA is to ensure that retired presidents and vice presidents can live out the remainder of their lives in security and dignity; the current amendments in Taiwan would limit the special treatment to between 10 and 12 years after leaving office.

In the US, the FPA allows a former president to hire only one staff member; in Taiwan, a former president is entitled to eight staff members, six drivers, an office and a house. Amendments to curtail these benefits would still provide former presidents with up to three members of staff, as the recently retired president may still play an active role in politics.

It is very strange that these amendments provide such luxury for recently retired presidents, who are likely to remain politically active, while abandoning them when they grow old and senile. It also goes against the spirit of the US legislation in this respect.

Moreover, the proposal to reduce the security entourage for former presidents from 16 to three, which must be paid for out of the former president's pocket, is a risky proposal in a political environment like Taiwan's with its intense rivalry and feuding.

I have put my suggestions to legislators promoting these amendments, but as they have not gained much support, I have decided to put forward my own proposal.

My suggestion is to reduce staff for former heads of state to just two, but to offer former presidents and vice presidents lifelong pensions. The security entourage for a former president should be 12 people for the first eight years and then be reduced to six. While former vice presidents should not be provided with an office, they should still get a security detail of six for the first eight years, in consideration of the fierce animosity that exists in Taiwanese politics.

Many legislators support my suggestions privately, but have been drawn into the populist current that is demanding drastic curtailments of the current special treatment.

In fact, if the measures that I have proposed were adopted, the budgetary provisions for former presidents and vice presidents would be reduced to NT$13 million from NT$38 million.

The public should find such a reduction satisfactory, and the fact that legislators have been unwilling to make their support of my ideas public simply underlines the power of populist sentiment. After all, government policy cannot continue to be directed by the unconsidered demands of populism.

Lin Cho-shui is a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.

TRANSLATED BY DANIEL CHENG
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