The biggest failure of politicians or political parties is not suffering a trouncing at the hands of voters, but rather failing to see the underlying reason behind the defeat.
Following the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) crushing losses in the Nov. 24 local elections, the party made a show of being earnest.
The “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day” labor reform and pension reform, as well as others initiated by the central government, were attributed by some in the party as the reason for the hemorrhaging of votes.
Later, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) provided her own analysis, saying: “The public was not able to keep up with the pace of reform.”
Good grief. Is that it? Is this the true reason or could it be that the Tsai administration has bungled its reform program?
Some voters will inevitably support the reforms, while others will not. A problem arises when a government, instead of dealing with one reform at a time, initiates several changes simultaneously. Any government that does so will quickly find that it has bitten off more than it can chew and will be forced to fight fires on multiple fronts.
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) secretary-general Hsu Shui-teh (許水德) once smugly declared: “The KMT owns the courts.”
Twenty-three years after Hsu’s remark, have the courts shed their party-state political roots? Repeated polls have shown that 70 to 80 percent of the public does not trust the judiciary and public prosecutors, and during Tsai’s inaugural speech she elicited the largest round of applause when she pledged to carry out judicial reform.
There was a consensus among the public for bold judicial reform and this should have been the first act of her administration. The failure to do so was, without a doubt, the biggest misstep of her administration.
While the law itself is inanimate, it is interpreted by people of flesh and blood. If judicial reform is not focused on individuals — which means implementing a system to appoint and dismiss judicial officials — the process will descend into a farce and finish up as nothing more than old wine presented in a new bottle. Even worse, it is also possible that all of the Tsai administration’s reforms will eventually be reversed by the administrative courts and through constitutional interpretations by the grand justices.
If you do not believe this could happen, you are not paying attention. On Nov. 28, just four days after the local elections, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled that the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee’s decision to suspend the operations of the National Women’s League and freeze NT$38.5 billion (US$1.25 billion) of assets because of its affiliation to the KMT was illegal and should be overturned.
Additionally, following a counterappeal by the KMT, the Supreme Administrative Court on Dec. 6 overruled the committee’s resolution in June last year to recover NT$864.88 million in compensation for the party’s sale of 458 properties, allegedly appropriated from the Japanese colonial government.
It now appears likely that all of the government’s hard work toward confiscating ill-gotten assets will be undone by the courts.
One can see that without judicial reform, the comprehensive reforms that the public voted for in 2016 will be snuffed out and the next reform in the firing line could well be pension reform.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor from National Hsinchu University of Education and a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Edward Jones
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