In its candidates’ campaigns for the five recent special municipality elections campaigns, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) focused on accusing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of a lack of governance skills. This caused the KMT a lot of problems during the campaign, but now that the elections are over, it’s apparently water under the bridge. To everyone’s surprise, the KMT is putting on the same old show over the second-generation National Health Insurance (NHI) plan.
Reforming the NHI is a very important matter, and if it isn’t done now, Taiwan’s health insurance system could go bankrupt. The government, however, doesn’t seem to think this very important, and although the Department of Health (DOH), experts and academics have worked on the plan for years, 70 percent of the public don’t understand it and 80 percent of KMT legislators oppose it, ravaging it in the legislature. The Cabinet immediately abandoned its own policy of household-based premiums in favor of the current system where premiums are calculated on individual income. How could the decision-making process be this slipshod?
NHI reform had been in the works for several years before a plan was proposed at the beginning of this year that included the suggestions of 100 experts and academics. DOH Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) has already put his job on the line. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has stressed the importance of NHI reform and, a few months ago, he set a timetable for the required legal amendments. However, now the Presidential Office, the Cabinet and the KMT are not getting involved and are apparently unconcerned, instead placing all the responsibility on Yaung. The NHI is closely related to the tax system and tax legislation, but the finance department is staying out of it and has poured a big bucket of cold water on the DOH’s plans, saying it cannot amend any tax laws.
The DOH has had little communication with either the legislature or civic groups over the course of this process and now the time of reckoning is at hand. It came to the legislature prepared with its hard hat on its head, but found its protection wanting. In the past few days the DOH has returned with a new version of the plan reworked virtually beyond recognition.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) is a canny operator who knows how to choose his words. He is also quick to sound the retreat at any sign of trouble, and apt to pass the buck. In this instance, first he claimed his words were misinterpreted in the legislature, then he said the press quoted him out of context. We are seeing the same thing here that we saw with the US beef imports fiasco: Wu is very sensitive to his popularity ratings and understands the political game. He won’t let policy continuity get in the way of a quiet life.
The second-generation health insurance policy is very important, involving the welfare of everyone in Taiwan, but you don’t get any sense of this from the attitude of the Cabinet or the Presidential Office. US President Barack Obama made healthcare reform a priority, consulting Congress weekly and meeting leaders of civic groups. He gave speeches throughout the country, persuading the public of the importance of the reforms and on the eve of the vote did everything possible to get the bill through, ever aware that every vote counted. This is how important legislation is dealt with in democratic countries. In contrast, Ma has done little else but talk, hoping that everything will go the way he wants it. That’s not how things work.
This government has been accused of a lack of governance. This accounts for Ma’s drop in popularity and loss of votes. The way this reform has been handled is a perfect example of Ma’s incompetence. His performance in the special municipality elections has afforded him another chance, but he clearly hasn’t learned his lesson. He has tried to distance himself, relying on his superhuman Teflon abilities, but the press and the public are taking note.
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
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