On Nov. 11, 45 top-level Taichung City municipal officials, including two bureau directors, chose to join the DPP en masse. Despite the possibility of violating administrative neutrality, such an action has been interpreted as the committee chairman of the DPP's Taichung division Chen Wen-hsien's
When the KMT was in power, similar cases were severely criticized by the opposition parties. After coming to power, however, why has the DPP gone even further, encouraging these officials to defect to the ruling party? Has the DPP really lost its mind after coming to power?
According to the Law on Local Government Systems
Unfortunately, the mass induction ceremony in Taichung has clearly shown that the law has failed to reach its aim. The administrative officials in Taichung still need to sacrifice their own wills for the sake of keeping their jobs -- to swing back and forth between the ruling and the opposition parties just like willows.
Top-level officials have the right to freely join or leave any political party. It does not violate administrative neutrality at all if they are inducted -- on their free time -- without the use of any public resources. The political meaning, however, of a group of top-level government officials collectively joining the DPP should not be ignored. Such an action, in fact, is not simply an exercise of civil rights but a terrible example of a violation of administrative neutrality.
First of all, when a group of top-level government officials choose to join the ruling party at the same time and in the same place, it is very difficult to convince the public that they are just simply exercising their civil rights. Besides, since they are all officials who serve in the same government, such an action cannot be viewed as an individual's behavior but should be interpreted as the collective behavior of a group of officials.
Moreover, since these officials are all top-level officials in the Taichung City Government, it is clearly sending out a message that only officials who choose to join the DPP can be promoted to the top. It is not only a blow to the professionally-oriented administrative officials, but it also hurts administrative neutrality in Taiwan significantly.
Kuei Hung-cheng is an assistant research fellow at the National Policy Foundation.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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