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.
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