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Editorial: Who wants to be a whipping boy?

Auric Goldfinger, James Bond's most memorable adversary, said of unfortunate events with a tendency to recur: "The first time is happenstance, the second time coincidence, the third time is enemy action." So who is the enemy responsible for this week's Cabinet near-meltdown, the third in two years? Unfortunately, if the blame is to be pinned on anybody, it is not on the much-questioned motives of those who organized Saturday's protest demonstration by farmers and fishermen. Rather it has to be laid at the door of the president himself. Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is his own worst enemy.

It was shocking to hear of Chen protesting last week that he had been misled by the Cabinet as to the real nature of farmers' and fishermen's grievances and the strength of opposition to the Ministry of Finance's restructuring plan. How could the president have been misled? Maybe there is truth in KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) claims that Chen spends too much time campaigning for Lee Ying-yuan and not enough on serious national issues.

It would be nice to know exactly where Chen thinks he has been misled. Was it that he was not properly informed about the finance ministry's plan? Then surely it was his job to get informed. He's the president; he just has to ask for a briefing. Was it that he was not informed about the farmers' and fishermen's feelings? The Council of Agriculture should have told him. If it couldn't, he should have demanded better intelligence. And whatever information it did provide, he should have used his own sources -- talks with legislators of party rank and file from rural communities for example -- to cross-check. It was, in fact, just such a meeting which led to his asking the Cabinet a week ago to suspend the financial reform plan. But why didn't Chen initiate something of this sort before the reforms were implemented in the fist place. It is simply unacceptable to be told that a crisis, which has the potential to wreck the Cabinet and has been two months in the making, can catch the president unawares.

The premier is apparently to stay in place. Nevertheless Minister of Finance Lee Yung-san (李庸三) and Council of Agriculture Chairman Fan Chen-tsung (范振宗) appear set on leaving the Cabinet. Fan has said that he has been considering doing so for some time, which is tantamount to saying that he wasn't up to the job and was a bad choice in the first place. Lee is by far the best finance minister the DPP government has had, although with such rapid turnover -- three in two and a half years -- none so far could be said to have had time to really master the job. It is hard to imagine that Lee would want to stay in the job after being so comprehensively hung out to dry by the president.

We do not yet know who might take the spare Cabinet places. But a wider question has to be: why would anybody want to? First on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant issue and now on the reform of farmers' and fishermen's credit associations, the president has displayed political incompetence, followed by an ugly tendency to call on ministers to allow ignominy to be heaped upon their heads to save him from the consequences of his own lack of judgement. It is hard to imagine that a job description which revolves around a readiness to be the president's whipping boy is going to attract the sort of expertise the Cabinet really needs.
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