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Editorial: Pushing voters to the extreme

Political parties tend to sensationalize election campaigns by exposing corruption among their opponents rather than focusing on policy. The problem with this is that all sense of proportion is lost; now, the pan-blue camp has lost all sense of reason in its latest exercise in spleen-venting.

The pan-blue camp's latest move has been to use its legislative majority to slash the budgets of the Mainland Affairs Council, the Government Information Office, the Central Election Commission and the Examination Yuan. If such election stunts continue, various key government departments will be paralyzed after the Dec. 3 elections, just like the Control Yuan, where only drivers and cleaners now turn up for work.

The mudslinging this year began with the pan-blue camp jumping on the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp scandal. This led to revelations that former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男) had repeatedly abandoned his post to go on gambling trips in South Korea.

This gave the pan-blue camp's morale a huge boost. In response, the pan-green camp attacked the 18 percent preferential interest rate given to retired military personnel, civil servants and schoolteachers. It also accused several high-ranking Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials of including the years they served as party officials to increase their pension entitlements.

In a healthy democracy, the opposition monitors the public purse and government spending. It should not slash government budgets simply to punish what it sees as "disobedient" government agencies. Although pan-blue camp legislators take pleasure in such retaliatory measures, they undermine the country as a whole.

Although this has also damaged the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) administrative record, the ill-effects of these actions can only hurt the broad majority of Taiwanese. Those who suffer as a result will grow impatient with the punitive measures the opposition has adopted.

Unless legislators can convince the public that its budget cuts are appropriate, their actions will be seen as emotive rather than rational. Forcing ministerial resignations and slashing budgets as forms of punishment will only foster a culture of yes-men in government agencies, while anyone willing to defend government policy will be forced out. It will be a case of bad money driving good money out of circulation.

Is the ultimate goal of the opposition to fill government with servile administrators whose aim is to preserve harmony at all costs, even at the price of good government? It is tempting to say that this attitude may alienate moderate pan-blue supporters.

Another consequence of these spoiling tactics might be added pressure on ministries in relation to the little money that they can secure. This would merely exacerbate a situation that flourished under the KMT, when the party did deals with legislators acting in cahoots with local contractors in return for support for certain policies.

Taiwan, like any other democratic country, simply cannot afford to pay the price of ruling and opposition parties paralyzing the government in an electoral feud. If the legislature cuts the government's budget by as much as NT$25 billion (US$744 million) as it has threatened, then this would be the largest cut ever inflicted on the DPP government.

Pan-blue camp legislators may yet discover that petulant legislative vandalism can have grave electoral repercussions.
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