In a situation where few can feel the economic recovery and where there is no growth either economically or in the employment rate, the 18 percent preferential interest rate on the savings of military personnel, civil servants and teachers merely serves to reinforce the feeling of unfairness and deprivation among the general public.
A political avalanche is in the making and it will bury the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) if it insists on supporting the 18 percent interest rate for these privileged groups.
The treatment of retired civil servants and the general public could not be more different. We are all citizens of the same nation, but while one group enjoys an 18 percent preferential interest rate on savings, everyone else receives 1 percent.
This is not only unfair, it is outrageous. No matter how the KMT and the government try to defend their position, they convince no one. One reason the reaction has been so vigorous was Examination Yuan President John Kuan’s (關中) explanation that civil servants are simply different from common people.
The Ministry of Civil Service argued that the introduction of reforms including the preferential 18 percent interest rate would save the nation NT$100 million (US$3.45 million) over five years, though this claim was immediately criticized as being less than it seemed.
Currently, the government spends more than NT$75 billion annually financing its preferential interest rate policy. That is almost NT$400 billion over five years of which NT$100 million represents just 0.025 percent.
This system is unfair and it speaks to an historical unfairness that reminds people how the KMT has consistently favored military personnel, civil servants and teachers. Their children have received educational subsidies while those of farmers and workers have not. Military personnel and teachers have also been exempt from paying taxes for decades, a benefit that will only be abolished next year, but they will be reimbursed for any money taken away in taxes.
Which other professions receive such privileged treatment?
Kuan defended the preferential interest rate by saying that civil servants are different from common people and that the country would take care of anyone with the ability to pass the civil service examination. However, any such statement is historically nonsensical when the channels to becoming a civil servant are a root cause of unfairness.
The KMT devised a way to select civil servants based on a provincial quota that was only abolished in 1994 following a constitutional amendment. The quotas were applied to all Chinese provinces, which meant that the acceptance rate for examinees whose home province was Taiwan was much lower than for those of candidates from other Chinese provinces.
In addition, almost 50 percent of soldiers who took the exam to transfer into the civil service were accepted, and they were the first to enjoy the preferential 18 percent interest rate.
This preferential interest rate has created and is creating unfairness, but the government continues to defend it. The KMT lost the township chief by-election in Caotun Township (草屯), Nantou County, the first election in the centennial year of the Republic of China. People are unhappy, and this defeat is only the beginning of a political avalanche that will bring down the KMT and cause it to disintegrate in next year’s legislative and presidential elections.
Hu Wen-hui is a media commentator.
TRANSLATED BY TAIJING WU
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