Seemingly Glamorous Record Conceals Hollowing Crisis
United Daily News Editorial, January 1, 2022
Driven by the global recovery, Taiwan’s economy grew over 6 percent in 2021, its stock market index closed at 18,000 points, and the Evergreen Marine gave out 40-month bonus to each of its employees. Taiwan-made wafers have become the materials chased by the world, their strategic importance is unprecedented and shining. However, accompanying these records, many industries were ruined by the epidemic, many old stores were forced to close, their employees lost their jobs and became losers in the high growth economy.
Besides self-satisfaction, when examining the 2021 economic record, the Tsai Ing-wen administration must be cautious, for the gap between the poor and the rich has widened. Furthermore, while the incumbent administration is satisfied with the results of epidemic control, the shortages of vaccines and their delayed deliveries occurred frequently last year, so the government had to rely on vaccines donated by foreign countries. When Foxconn, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation offered to donate vaccines, the governmental agencies were arrogant and dismissive, with the purpose of protecting the indigenous Medigen vaccines. Looking back now, without the 15 million doses of Bio-N-Tech vaccines donated by the private sector, Taiwan’s young generation would not have been vaccinated, and what kind of epidemic condition can we expect to see now?
The shining records of economic growth concealed the wider gap between the poor and the rich, and the twists and turns of epidemic control saw the selfishness of government’s decision-making and the ridiculous destruction of professionalism; these situations are worrisome. Furthermore, while Taiwan’s total number of deaths from COVID-19 is low, the death rate is 5 percent, which is more than two and half times of the worldwide death rate of 1.9 percent. The health care system of Taiwan is sound, and the medical professionals are excellent, so it is hard to understand why Taiwan is lagging in treating COVID-19 patients. Minister Chen Shih-chung of the Ministry of Health and Welfare was busy in singing songs at parties and in preparing for running public offices, does he care about this matter?
To contrast with the good economic performance, Taiwan’s politics became more authoritarian and nontransparent. Most seriously, we see the progress from the “unity of party and government” to the “superiority of party over government”. To put it simply, as Tsai holds the great power of president and party chairwoman concurrently, she not only forgot her promise to be humble, but also suppressed the public opinion to consolidate her power at will. The cultivation of cyber armies started with the ruling power, and increasingly governmental agencies began to employ cyber armies with official budgets under various names, and they united many pro-government media outlets to monopolize the public opinion. Gradually governmental officials became the believers of propaganda and are convinced that brainwashing is more important than doing the actual things.
The long-term result of the unity of party and government has led to the collapse of the checks and balances of the government. During the first four years of the Tsai administration, the Legislative Yuan has become the rubber stamp of the Executive Yuan. In her second term of office, the Legislative Yuan was called the obedient dog of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP); it could amend the law for one DPP member at one place, and it could send the central government’s budget directly to the second reading without being reviewed by the committees. The legislators who were elected by the people have become meaningless straw men. This phenomenon applies the same to the Control Yuan and the Judicial Yuan. No matter how ridiculous things happened to public officials, there is no censure from members of the Control Yuan or condemnation from judges; everyone has been busying in shifting blames.
The unity of party and government under the Kuomintang (KMT) reign may have been the legacy of war and turmoil, but the unity of party and government under DPP rule not only symbolizes the withdrawal and fall of democracy, but it also cruelly tears Taiwan’s society apart. The reason is that a ruling party with hollow ideology is unable to promote the advancement of the country, it needs to find enemies within to identify friend or foe. Therefore, the division of Taiwan’s society becomes deeper and deeper and is difficult to heal.
To couple with the hollowing out of ideology is the crisis of misplacement of DPP’s talents. There are many talented people in DPP, but with President Tsai’s priority policy of maintaining stability, many controversial political figures are not replaced; those figures include Premier Su Cheng-chang, Minister Chen Chih-chung of the Council of Agriculture, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung, and Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung. Their staying in the government creates bottlenecks for promotion of talented people, worsens the culture of governance, and further tortures the people spiritually. With the tactics of using the votes in south Taiwan to supplement the votes in the north, DPP successfully defeated the four referendum votes. But the approval votes all the way from Keelung City to Miaoli County signified that people have seen through the malignant nature of DPP. Is President Tsai aware of this?