In the six years that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been in office, the political situation has deteriorated into turmoil and instability. The economy is weak, the wealth gap has expanded, and both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and opposition legislators, as well as the public, are complaining.
Many of the reforms Ma pledged to implement during his presidential election campaigns have never been fulfilled. Here are a few examples of his broken promises: divesting the KMT of all its ill-gotten party assets, reforming the civil servant pension system, 6 percent economic growth, an all-volunteer military, a defense budget that amounts to 3 percent of GDP and streamlining the government.
Even the clean government policy that Ma promised to implement with such sincerity has failed.
Corruption continues as the scandals surrounding former KMT Taipei City councilor Lai Su-ju (賴素如) and former Cabinet secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世) show. Ma’s attempts to claim clean government as one of his achievements are laughable.
Honesty is the basic qualification for anyone who wants to become a government official, but he seems incapable of enforcing even that. He also often takes pride in what he calls his cross-strait achievements, but the general public looks at his excessive pro-China stance with concern and apprehension.
The result was the Sunflower movement and the protests against the cross-strait service trade agreement and calls to halt talks with China.
Ma wants to continue the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) to maintain a stable power supply, but endless anti-nuclear demonstrations and former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) hunger strike forced him to halt part of the project.
Furthermore, his clash with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has created a constitutional crisis and because of Ma’s improper handling of the issue, the public will not support his demands that Wang be disciplined for judicial interference, even if he was right to make that demand.
However, Ma still continues to feel good about himself and thinks that someone else is responsible for all these problems.
Although the public are critical of Ma, he did not address this issue in a speech marking his sixth anniversary in office, instead speaking of the importance of listening to the young.
Ma announced that the Cabinet would set up a youth advisory task force consisting mainly of people below the age of 35 and that their opinions would be included along with those of academics and experts. He said that this approach would be expanded to the ministries so that young people could be consulted on policy formation. In addition, he also proposed five programs to respond to demands to solve the discrepancy between the level of education and employment, youth entrepreneurship, residential justice, free-trade policy and participation in the decisionmaking process.
Ma wants to co-opt the young, but that may not have much of an effect because he is playing the same old tricks. He can make a pledge, but he does not have credibility when it comes to implementation.
As for the talk about a youth advisory task force, the KMT has had a youth union, a youth corps and a youth league. In the end, these have been of no help, which implies that the youth advisory task force will not be very successful either.
As the year-end elections draw nearer and the political pressure increases, the Ma administration will once again focus on votes and ignore the youth issue.
When Ma criticizes the student protesters for hurting the nation’s competitiveness, while trying to co-opt the younger generation, he points to his administration’s biggest problem — confusing values and action.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
RSS