Elected officials in Taiwan have to face a public review of their performance every four years; the president, city mayors and county commissioners serve a maximum of two terms in office. The caliber of elected officials and leaders rests in voters’ hands.
Voters’ misjudgement brings negative consequences.
When Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) was running for office last year, she was accused of falsely inflating the wages of her publicly paid assistants and keeping the extra money for herself. If Hsinchu residents had rejected Kao back then, they could have avoided the scandals that followed, such as the prosecution of Kao on charges of embezzlement of public funds, of Kao being chauffeured around the city in luxury vehicles and living in a NT$50 million (US$1.55 million) apartment owned by a property developer, of her “good friend” — namely her boyfriend, Lee Chung-ting (李忠庭) — meddling in municipal affairs and of Kao allowing construction companies to avoid environmental oversight.
Before former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) made a bid for the mayorship in 2018, the old slicker has already made “slacking off” his motto. If Kaohsiung residents had carefully scrutinized his conduct and reminded themselves that “a leopard cannot change its spots,” they would not have voted him into office, then later overwhelmingly voting to recall him.
TPP Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) rose to power with his vow to “knock down the wall” built by the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party. As Ko was a political neophyte, voters were easily duped.
However, as Taipei mayor, Ko received the lowest score in surveys of public satisfaction with the performance of the mayors of the six special municipalities for four straight years, while his vow to get to the bottom of what he called the “five major scams” all but disappeared. There have also been multiple allegations of him visiting corporate leaders behind closed doors. For voters who re-elected Ko for a second term, despite him having shown his true colors, it is highly doubtful that they knew what their support entails, which is to reinforce “the wall” instead of knocking it down. If one cannot take care of one’s household, how can one run a country? It is baffling why Ko still has die-hard fans.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) considers himself the standard-bearer of the Republic of China (ROC), but during his administration, he banned spectators from waving ROC flags, while allowing People’s Republic of China flags at the 2001 AFC Women’s Championship and the 2005 Asian Roller Skating Championship. As a president who has figuratively trampled on the ROC flag while claiming to be its champion, the public voted for him in 2008 and handed him a second term in 2012.
When a low-ranking Chinese official — Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), then-chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait — visited Taiwan in 2008, Ma had all ROC flags taken down. Is it not the voters’ fault who had enabled Ma to debase one’s city and then the country?
That a swindler can continue to stay in the political arena stems from voters’ indulgence: The fault lies with the voters as they are the reason problematic politicians are able to stay around. Even the loose cannon Ko said something wise once: “You can only fool me once.”
In the face of self-motivated political parties and candidates, voters should always remember the fool me once principle, so that unfit or untrustworthy politicians can be ousted from power and removed from office every four years.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Rita Wang
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