As Taiwan marks the second anniversary of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration, many Taiwanese have moved from feeling hopeful to anxious and now disappointed, and opinion polls show that the public’s satisfaction with the government is at an all-time low.
Despite an unending stream of propaganda from Tsai and the use of statistics by officials, the public remains unmoved and full of anxiety for the future. Many are beginning to lose patience, which could well be reflected in the year-end elections and cause several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians to lose their seats.
Yet, is the Tsai administration not working hard at reform and transitional justice, and has the premier not stated that he is a “Taiwan independence worker?”
One might then ask why the public is dissatisfied and what they are anxious about.
The majority of Taiwanese endorse the government’s ideals, values, vision and sense of justice and fairness. Tsai believes she is doing all in her power to get the job done, so why is there such a disconnect between the government and public?
Some media outlets have accused Tsai of “picking fights, carrying out a power grab and taking the nation to the brink.”
Other observers have said that Tsai’s reform program has hit the buffers and her government is trying too hard to please everyone.
Some say it is because salaries are too low and housing prices too high, while others believe her government has not done enough to further independence.
These are all superficial reasons that ignore the real cause of the public’s dissatisfaction.
The accusation of picking fights is a non-issue. If the government were efficient, rapid reform would not necessarily be a bad thing. The main issue is the government’s attitude and strategy.
A good example is its approach in dealing with the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ill-gotten assets.
The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee should not have been given the authority to decide what is and is not an ill-gotten asset. This should be determined by the Judicial Yuan to clearly demonstrate the separation between the judiciary and the executive branches.
Unfortunately the approach being used means that the committee has both the right to define ill-gotten assets and the right to make rulings and hand out punishments. The constitutionality of this approach is clearly questionable.
Pension reform is another good example. The policy should have been able to garner wide public support, but is struggling to gain the support of even half of the public.
From the very beginning, DPP politicians have made a complete fist of it, picking fights with all sorts of different groups, pitching the young against the old, and workers against the military, civil servants and public school teachers. This has stirred up generational and class division, which is by far the greatest failure of the pension reform.
Inciting class division to push through pension reform is bone-headed, because an objective analysis shows that nearly 10 million workers would also be affected by the reform. When the workers the government relied on to attack government employees find that they too are “victims,” there will be a powerful backlash.
Predictably, the government has fallen silent on labor pension reform for some time and some DPP politicians are even calling on the government to scrap labor pension reform for fear of “unsettling society.”
How ironic. If labor pension reform is binned, this would confirm the accusations that the DPP has been targeting its opponents.
Allen Houng is a professor at National Yang-Ming University’s Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition.
Translated by Edward Jones
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