During the campaign for the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thought that China was secretly assisting the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) campaign on the Internet, while ignoring that the main factor behind its defeat was a cyberarmy consisting of about 333,000 retired public employees and more than 600,000 active public-sector employees — military officers, civil servants, public-school teachers, police officers and firefighters — whose pension payouts and preferential savings rate have been cut.
More than half of the retired civil servants and public-school teachers — who also include a “silent generation” of people born between 1928 and 1945 — are baby boomers born between 1946 and 1965, and a small percentage of Generation Xers, born between 1966 and 1979. They all belong to their generations’ elite.
For instance, for retired public elementary-school teachers, the acceptance rate at normal schools in the 1950s and 1960s was as low as 2 percent, and the university admission rate was about 10 percent. For someone aspiring to become a government official, the senior and junior civil servant exam acceptance rates were less than 10 percent.
This group made up the driving force behind the nation’s economic boom in the 1960s and 1970s. Upon retirement, many of them held high-ranking positions, such as administrative director, school president, police commissioner, general, colonel or senior management. In family life, they have become respected family elders and community leaders. In other words, their influence is spread across the nation.
When the DPP was enacting pension reform bills last year, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) suggested that the government should adopt an Executive Yuan proposal to gradually reduce the 18 percent preferential savings rate to minimize the effects on the public.
Unexpectedly, DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) pushed through another piece of legislation aiming to phase out the preferential interest rate to zero two years after the bill’s promulgation and made the law retroactive.
This decision caused retired public-sector employees to form self-help groups and seek a constitutional interpretation. They started to spread the message using Facebook and Line chat groups. A Facebook search found the Association of Civil Rights Advocation for Government Employee to have more than 8,000 members; the Association of Retired Military Officials, Civil Servants and Educators had 16,000 members; the Association for Retired Police Officers of the Republic of China had 8,800 members; the Taiwan Education Retirees Association had 16,000 members; and the Association of Advocating Rights For Retired Military Officials, Civil Servants and Educators had 14,000 members, along with many other alumni associations and class reunion groups.
Private Line chat groups are divided into subgroups according to location, school and administrative agencies due to a 500-member limit. These subgroups communicate with each other, forming a compact “cyberarmy of pension reform victims” that superficially appears to be very loose. Last month’s local elections were only a trial.
This massive cyberarmy is a closed online community and the public does not know how they mobilize and operate. During the elections, they targeted the Kaohsiung mayoral election and DPP candidate Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), because he had criticized the 18 percent preferential saving rate as being unfair and unjust, insulting retirees.
If they could keep Chen from being elected with the help of chat groups, they could do the same thing in the 2020 presidential and legislative elections and bring down the DPP government, deprive it of a legislative majority and remove the text making pension reform retroactive.
Most of the retirees have families spanning three or four generations, including voters. If they mobilize friends and neighbors — a conservative estimate of 10 more voters — there could be 4.6 million people not voting for the DPP. If 630,000 active public-sector employees are included, and assuming that they can mobilize five voters each, there would be another 3.8 million voting against the DPP. Adding these figures, more than 8 million people could vote to show their distrust of Tsai.
If this cyberarmy of retirees displays its power in the next presidential and legislative elections, it will target DPP legislators and Tsai. If that turns out to be the case, another transition of power in 2020 would not be unexpected.
The DPP should carefully examine how the pension reforms harm others and itself, and find ways to solve the problem, lest it end up falling apart and unable to rise again.
Kao Chuan-chen is a former university lecturer.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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