The pandas are history, so to speak. But if there is one thing that lingers in the electoral consciousness after that ridiculous episode, it is the impression of a government and a political party at cross purposes with themselves in talking straight with the public. That is to say, why was the formal announcement to reject the animals left in the hands of lower, "ecological" agencies -- the Forestry Bureau and the Council of Agriculture -- when the fate of the creatures was always going to be determined by political considerations at the very top?
President Chen Shui-bian's (
In the end, the public -- and a flaky international press -- were treated to a self-defeating comedy of indecision that anti-climaxed with junior functionaries deflating whatever political mileage could be gained from the refusal. The only conclusion to be reached after all this is that the government is in desperate need of half-competent political advisers. Perhaps they should give Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
There remains in government agencies a pointed tension between the political and the professional, between propaganda and practice. It is a balance that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has not been able to stabilize since coming to power, and to be fair, this cannot be blamed entirely on the party. What the DPP and its executive appointments must understand, however, is that it is their responsibility to communicate effectively with the public. In other words, they should be prepared to tell it like it is when the occasion demands it. The party is only now beginning to wake up to this reality, though its "report card" strategy to regain public favor unveiled on Wednesday seems to be a case of new clothes, same model.
Notwithstanding the famous concern of Humphrey Appleby over ministers making "courageous decisions," what Chen's team needs is a tutorial on why having a spine doesn't necessarily mean being inflexible or extreme -- even in the presence of extremist foes. But meaningful flexibility demands a healthy spine, and this apparently is in rare supply in those ministries most vulnerable to opposition attack. At the moment, criticism of government performance is met with a strange mixture of sheepishness and knee-jerk panic, all feeding the hand that bites. Mix this with a baffling indifference to coordination and refusal to promote genuine success stories and you have a recipe for political decimation, regardless of the merit of the alternative.
So much for the government. As for the DPP, it may well be that the party will not be able to correct its poor wooing of the swing voter until it is so humiliated at the polls that the deadest of dead wood can finally be extracted from the organization and replaced with people of competence and passion -- and guts. But there is little reason to be confident in the short term. The party's culture is such that poor performers, such as would-be Taipei mayoral candidate Shen Fu-hsiung (
For DPP supporters, the disquiet begins when one asks: Who is there left in the party who can do this?
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