According to public opinion polls, what most people are concerned about is the government's ability to implement policies, or, truthfully, its inability. One only needs to look at the implementation of the National Travel Card scheme to see the problems the administration has had with putting new policies in place.
The National Travel Card program was meant to encourage civil servants to travel domestically instead of overseas, in order to promote domestic tourism and help revive the economy in the wake of the 921 earthquake. It replaced the KMT govern-ment's system of subsidizing bureaucrats' holiday travel, which required those traveling to collect and submit receipts for their expenses.
However, the card scheme has spawned all sorts of irregularities. Many of the shops participating in the card scheme sell everything from jewelry to electrical appliances. It turns out that a huge number of civil servants have used their cards to pay for jewelry and appliances instead of travel. Statistics show that only 36 percent of the NT$3.1 billion subsidy for the National Travel Card plan has been used on travel-related expenditures. A well-intentioned policy has been derailed and 22 Control Yuan members have demanded an investigation.
Why have civil servants so badly abused the program? The card plan required them to spend their subsidies within specific time frames and they could not use the card in the city or county where they worked. Vacations, which should have been happy affairs, became shackled by restrictions. Who would be happy with such a vacation? Wouldn't it be better to get some useful appliances instead?
The restrictions on what businesses could participate in the card scheme have also been controver-sial. The cards are issued by partner banks, so they are actually credit cards -- the only difference being that they could only be processed on National Travel Card machines. So, does boosting tourism mean boosting the business of a few contracted shops?
Increasing the number of tourists is a goal of Premier Yu Shyi-kun's "Challenge 2008" economic plan. The intention was to increase and strengthen the nation's tourism resources and encourage civil servants to travel within the country. The card program may have been well-intentioned but is full of loopholes -- which people were quick to take advantage of. There have been complaints about the program ever since it was launched, but the government was slow to respond. Not until the Control Yuan moved to launch an investigation did the Cabinet wake up to the crisis.
The National Travel Card scheme is not a major policy, but it is an indicator of the government's sloppy decision-making, slow response and weak implementation and follow-up. The government says it is working to revive the economy, but how can people have confidence in the government's ability to devise effective stimulus programs?
How can people put their trust in the nation's civil servants, when so many bureaucrats apparently see nothing wrong with ripping off taxpayer dollars by abusing the travel card plan. Civil servants at every level should count their blessings that the government wanted to give them any money at all toward a vacation -- how many private companies subsidize their employee's holidays to the tune of NT$16,000 per year? While politicians have been quick to lambast the government for its failings as exemplified by the card scheme, have any called on errant civil servants to refund money spent on non-travel related purchases with the card?
The administration should learn a lesson from the mistakes it made in the card scheme and prepare its other programs more throughly -- obviously it can't rely on its bureaucrats to work out the details.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
RSS