The popularity of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is plummeting in opinion polls and policy implementation has come to a standstill. The administration is working hard to climb out of the hole and the public is feeling the pain. The government is coming apart at the seams and even if a policy is correct, its implementation is wrong, attracting even more criticism.
With news that the Labor Insurance Fund (LIF) is on the verge of bankruptcy, everyone is directing their attention to the deteriorating finances of the labor insurance and the labor pension systems. There is even news that a fund manager at ING Securities Investment and Trust Co (ING SITC), the company appointed by the government to manage the LIF, has been colluding with Ablerex Electronics, a company traded on Taiwan’s over-the-counter market, racking up NT$210 million (US$7.18 million) in losses and adding to the worries of workers already concerned that they will lose their retirement pension. Although this is a case of white-collar crime, the government is to blame for neglecting to manage and monitor the handling of the fund after it was entrusted to ING SITC.
As the government brings order to the real estate transactions system, promoting residential justice and the registration of actual transaction prices are important tools for promoting a more open and transparent trading information system. Offering open Internet access to real transaction prices is one important way to let the public judge the health of the system. However, as soon as the Web site set up by the Ministry of the Interior for this purpose went online it crashed. This was a massive disappointment to members of the public wanting to check transaction information and a major embarrassment for the ministry.
Following the debacle, the ministry said the crash was caused by the huge number of visitors searching for information or a hacking attack that caused the servers to crash. In either case, this should have been planned for beforehand and prevented. As a result of its lack of executive ability, the government simply didn’t pay enough attention to these matters.
By contrast, granting Taiwan visa-waiver status is not a big issue for a country like the US, but the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) still carried out a massive mobilization of its staff and set up information counters at train stations and night markets across Taiwan’s main cities to provide information about the policy in person and help explain changes to the system. Furthermore, when US Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez visited Taiwan to sign a statement of intent, paving the way for more bilateral trade and investment between the two countries, he also promoted the new visa-waiver regulations and invited Taiwanese friends to Houston to see Jeremy Lin (林書豪) play.
The AIT did not spend much money on advertising, instead planning a series of activities in coordination with Sanchez’ visit, making it the focus of local media attention. This was free advertising that was much more effective than all the embedded advertising on which Taiwan’s government is spending huge amounts of money.
By contrast, the Cabinet has spent in excess of NT$10 million promoting its program to strengthen economic momentum to no avail, making it a laughing stock. This shows that what matters most is effort, innovation and execution rather than how much resources one uses.
This government has never been bothered by policy quality, practical execution, management or supervision. All it does is spend money on advertising and image building, without any control of the results.
No one should be surprised that support for such a government is plummeting.
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
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