The new Cabinet is only a few days old and already the competence of the premier is under scrutiny over his brief, but bizarre, trip to Hong Kong. Ostensibly a fact-finding trip on landslide prevention technology, it turns out that Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) spent a good proportion of his time meeting Chinese powerbrokers in the Special Administrative Region — and, believe it or not, taking time out to accompany his son on a spot of fortune telling.
Fittingly, none of this augurs well. Whatever initial period of grace existed for the new premier has expired with this sloppily executed slice of cross-strait diplomacy. With Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators howling over reports by the Apple Daily in Hong Kong and Taiwan on Wu’s unannounced itinerary, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) must be wondering what he has to do to find a politically astute person to run the Executive Yuan.
Ma has previously “delegated responsibility” — let’s be euphemistic — to the Cabinet on sensitive domestic issues based on what he perceives to be a constitutional separation of powers.
It would be intriguing, therefore, if Wu was serving as Ma’s emissary. From Ma’s and China’s perspective, what does Wu have that Ma’s other negotiators and party colleagues lack?
As Ma prepares to take over the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairmanship next month, party and legislative tensions over how things are being run are in check — just. Even the discordant voices that exist on the pan-blue side of politics — KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) is a good example — remain largely supportive of the president.
This may not last much longer. Typhoon Morakot, the Deaflympics, the World Games in Kaohsiung, the swine flu outbreak and the trial of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his co-accused have helped to obscure this government’s struggle to make an impression in the more mundane aspects of day-to-day policy development and implementation.
There is, indeed, much about the way that this country is being run that is crying out for critique and overhaul. However, when a government is on the back foot, as this one is, more provocative reforms tend to be traded for the comfort of vulnerable legislators.
With the Ma administration, there is a significant deviation from this pattern. Cross-strait detente demands ongoing negotiations that please China, regardless of what anyone thinks back home. To continue along this road, it is essential that Ma’s Cabinet deliver results across all portfolios to ensure that DPP accusations of domestic neglect are neutralized.
Perhaps this is what Ma was getting at yesterday when he asked that civil servants bear the rights of ordinary people in mind. If the government cannot attract public support on issues as fundamental as basic policy, parity, respectful treatment and due process, then what hope will trade-offs with China have?
Ma’s problem — and it has always been his problem — is that his pretty language has rarely been backed by action when it comes to reforming the behavior of people under his command. His challenge now is not to reform the lowest ranking people on the civil servant scale, but to make something competent out of the people at the very top.
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