Cutting Pensions for Civil Servants and Public School Teachers, Can Tsai Salvage her Plummeting Standing?

 Cutting Pensions for Civil Servants and Public School Teachers, Can Tsai Salvage her Plummeting Standing?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

June 25, 2017

 Translation of an Except

President Tsai Ying-wen has just passed one year in office; just after a year, her public support rating for her governance has dropped to just about 20%. Under such atmospherics, the noisy drama of pension reforms for civil servants and public school teachers has been in full swing in the Legislature. Amid saber rattling, the Green legislators passed in the second reading a number of provisions more stringent than adopted by the “pension/annuity reform conference.” The Tsai government and the DPP apparently want to utilize a massive pension/annuity reform to salvage its own nearly bankrupt standing; however, in view of such a violent cutting approach, can President Tsai resist such gales and waves?

In the course of pension/annuity reforms, the DPP has endlessly manipulated rivalry and confrontation, blaming resistance and protests of groups representing the military, civil servants and public school teachers as the reason for the amendments becoming more stringent; the purpose is only for salvaging the Tsai government from the ravages in the image of its governance, deliberately sacrificing the civil servants and public school teachers for its cause. Nevertheless, with such a violent approach, it all the more substantiated the image that the DPP only knows struggle and not governance. In politics, the DPP has always been good at the approach of "cutting the throat till it breaks," endlessly fabricating physical confrontations, in order to highlight its own stance as dissidents. The pension reform is a case in point, but the DPP may not score a touchdown. The reasons are: one, the Tsai government has made missteps one after another in its administration, stepping on landmines everywhere, which cannot be turned for the better by a single pension reform. Two, the DPP has lost its credibility in plain view of the entire public, making civil servants and public school teachers feel disheartened. Three, pension/annuity reforms for labor and the military are still pending. While the DPP has brazenly sacrificed the rights and interests of civil servants and public school teachers, will labor and the military indeed let it manipulate reforms in a similar fashion?

The military, civil servants and public school teachers have always been partners in administration for the government; now they have been deemed as foes and considered as sacrificial lambs. We can hardly imagine how such a government can show good faith and efficiency.

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