The term “open government” has received a great deal of attention recently, with everyone from Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) to the Executive Yuan and New Taipei City Mayor and newly elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) talking about “transparency” and “open data.”
It is undoubtably Ko, who as an independent is unburdened by the strings that bind political parties and big corporations, who has led the trend. However, the ripples could extend farther than he expected if the public begins to demand a new standard of openness in politics and government.
Ko has recently waged war against what he sees as big corporations getting whatever they want under contracts signed with the Taipei City Government.
Farglory Land Development Co’s Taipei Dome project, Hon Hai Group’s construction of the Syntrend Creative Park, real-estate developer Radium Life Tech Co’s MeHAS City project and the Taipei Twin Towers project involving Taipei Gateway International Development Co are just a few of the deals that have raised Ko’s eyebrows and led him to ask how previous city administrations over the past 16 years came “to be hooked up with conmen whenever the city government signed contracts with private companies.”
Ko has promised to declassify and release all documentation related to these projects, and urged netizens to help review the material.
It is not surprising that Ko has aligned himself with netizens, as he would probably not have been elected without the support of the Internet-savvy younger generation.
Established political powers are bowing before the Ko phenomenon.
Lai, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member, has linked his battle with the Tainan City Council speaker, a KMT member, to the idea of “open government,” while Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) — in the wake of the KMT’s election rout in November last year that many feel was a “spill-over” effect from Ko’s campaign — has vowed to enhance communication with the online community. Meanwhile, Chu championed the idea of a more “open” KMT, with open candidate-selection and decisionmaking processes, ahead of the KMT’s chairmanship election.
In a speech to mark his inauguration as KMT chairman, Chu said the fast pace of cross-strait exchanges in recent years has had affected Taiwanese society and raised doubts about the fairness of the distribution of the benefits of such exchanges. Chu said he wanted the KMT to reflect on the difficulty caused by such inequalities, and called on China “to face this problem squarely.”
Insofar as the major voice of the movement against the cross-strait service trade agreement has focused on the secretive nature of the negotiations, Chu’s comments could be seen as responding to the public demand for better transparency.
The KMT, unlike the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), cannot afford to turn a deaf ear to public demands, and it should bear that in mind whenever it attempts to transform what should actually be nation-to-nation dealings into party-to-party negotiations, or when it is treated by the CCP as its counterpart.
After all, the KMT’s call for openness, unlike the CCP’s ballyhooing of what it calls Chinese-style democracy, comes with a price if not realized.
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
Next week, the nation is to celebrate the Lunar New Year break. Unfortunately, cold winds are a-blowing, literally and figuratively. The Central Weather Administration has warned of an approaching cold air mass, while obstinate winds of chaos eddy around the Legislative Yuan. English theologian Thomas Fuller optimistically pointed out in 1650 that “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” We could paraphrase by saying the coldest days are just before the renewed hope of spring. However, one must temper any optimism about the damage being done in the legislature by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), under
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
RSS