The new Cabinet lineup was announced yesterday and as expected, unfortunately, it looks pretty much like the old one. The list of appointees make it clear just what an empty gesture the resignation of Premier Jiang Yi-huah and his 81-member Cabinet was on Monday.
It also shows what a joke it was for Jiang to say that “any major or controversial policies should be left for the new Cabinet” to deal with because the nine-in-one elections last Saturday had shown that “many people are not satisfied with the direction of the government.”
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) obviously did not get the memo, as he demonstrated in his remarks to the KMT Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday, insisting that the overall direction of the country and the “direction of liberalization” were correct.
Premier-designate Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) also appears not to have heard the message. Given that Mao is close to Ma, he was never likely to differ much in either the policy goals or style set by Ma and Jiang, but it is sad to see just how clearly his roster of players reflects that.
The choice of Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中) to replace Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍) — who will become minister without portfolio — is hardly inspiring to those clamoring for more economic reforms and economic policies that are not primarily based on ever-closer ties with China.
Minister of Science and Technology Simon Chang (張善政) will fill the new vice premier slot left vacant by Mao’s promotion, while Coast Guard Administration Deputy Secretary-General Wang Chung-yi (王崇儀) will now head the agency.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) and Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) kept their seats, despite being lightning rods for protesters’ discontent since joining the Cabinet.
In the end, only two Cabinet members have left — if you do not count Jiang — Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) and Coast Guard Administration Minister Wang Ginn-wang (王進旺). Otherwise it was just a shuffling of some of the portfolios.
Ma has made a career out of promising reforms. As minister of justice, Taipei mayor, KMT chairman and president, and yet has consistently failed to deliver on those promises. He likes to talk about reform, but he does not like to implement it.
Mao on Monday will become Ma’s fifth premier, following in the footsteps of Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), Sean Chen and Jiang. The one thing these men all had in common, besides being KMT members, is that they basically followed Ma’s lead. They may have headed the central government, but it has always been Ma’s administration.
Which brings up the old debates about revising the Constitution to change the government from the quasi-presidential system we have now to a parliamentary system and to move toward a legislative election process that would ensure more proportionate representation.
Proponents of such changes should, in the coming months, seek to capitalize on the desire for reform evidenced by voter turnout and ballot choices last Saturday — they might never have a better chance. Our government’s leaders have shown that they are too set in their ways to change. Reforms will have to come from the bottom up, or else there will be a lot more empty gestures to come.
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
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,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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