In 2021, a theft occurred in Xichang in China’s Sichuan Province. After the thief, a man surnamed He (何), was caught, he allegedly asked the police to arrange a meeting between himself and the victim, a woman surnamed Liu (柳).
Upon meeting her, He said: “I did not even want your money. It was just that the code for the lock on your front door was too simple. I was just messing around. If you had made it more complicated, I would not be sitting in jail right now.”
Stunned, Liu asked the thief how it could be her fault that she was robbed.
He replied: “I never said it was your fault, but we are both partially responsible. If you had installed your security properly, would I have been able to break into your house to steal your things?”
In July, a thief broke into a house in Suqian, in China’s Jiangsu Province. The homeowner locked the thief inside, and when he tried to escape, his head got stuck in the gap of the door and he had difficulty breathing. When the police arrived, they had to call the fire department to saw through the door’s metal frame and eventually rescued the man, who had nearly suffocated.
These stories are quite fitting analogies to describe the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). After recklessly forcing through an amendment to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), the blue-white coalition celebrated, believing they had taken hold of a huge sum of money and paralyzed the government, killing two birds with one stone.
However, they recently realized that their formula was flawed — they failed to separate fiscal allocations for the three outlying counties from the 19 municipalities on Taiwan proper. As a result, the lump of taxpayers’ money they seized was not nearly as much as they originally anticipated.
Now, the KMT and TPP — the thieves — are shamelessly blaming the Executive Yuan for not warning them. They even rallied supporters to “order” the Executive Yuan to adjust the legislation to satisfy their original interests. They echo each other’s malicious deeds — behavior which is quite telling.
The laughable and ridiculous logic of the Sichuan thief is strikingly similar to that of the KMT and the TPP. They shamelessly tried and failed to steal money, shot themselves in the foot, then had the gall to blame the Executive Yuan for their absurd actions. On the other hand, their foolishness is on par with that of the thief in Jiangsu. The blue and white parties are barely hanging on — like a thief whose head is caught in a metal door.
The KMT and TPP should return to the correct path and put their effort toward doing something beneficial for Taiwan’s sustainable development.
Vincent Hong is a writer and technology industry retiree.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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