The Tsai Government’s Two “Consultations”: All Empty Rhetoric

 The Tsai Government’s Two “Consultations”: All Empty Rhetoric

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 10, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

With regard to the further revision of the Labor Standards Act this time, no matter how the DPP railroaded the proceedings in the parliament to gain victory, the label of the "Capitalist Progressive Party" has been firmly affixed to its body, with difficulty to remove it; the public's trust in the Tsai government has dwindled to nearly nothing. Last time, the Labor Standards Act was “revised for the worse” principally because the DPP acted alone, like a bull in a china shop, leading to difficulty in implementing “one mandatory holiday, one flexible day-off.” This time, the DPP still did not learn the lesson; besides using barricades and barbed-wire to encircle the largest restricted area in history, the government even deployed a heavy police force to enforce the encirclement, leading to laborers lying on rail tracks, while caucus-to-caucus consultations in the Legislative Yuan, as the DPP insisted on the Cabinet version of the amendment bill, finally ended as an empty move.

Not to be alone, in the past two days, the public witnessed one by one the Tsai government’s so-called "consultations" being empty rhetoric. For the dispute over aviation route M503, the President called an emergency national security meeting; after the meeting, she adopted an approach of talking to the media to handle the situation. In contrast, the Tsai government’s attitude in the "caucus-to-caucus consultations" in the parliament was even worse. The DPP caucus insisted on using the Cabinet’s version of the amendment bill, yielding not an inch, completely exposing the DPP’s high-handed manner in "complete control of government."

Please take a look! This is the attitude of a self-styled "government most adept at communication" when facing consultations. Externally, talking to the media with an inflated ego and crude attitude, it has no intention to truly solve the problem. Internally, it faced opposition parties with arrogance; even when sitting down for consultations, the opposition parties have to listen to the DPP.

From President Tsai's cross-Strait "consultations when talking to the media" to the DPP caucus’ “true railroading, fake consultations” in parliament, what truly worries the public is, in fact, not the DPP’s high-handedness, but the fact that the powers that be are at a loss, not being able to see a workable path, while blindly goading and ramming. The National Security team could not produce a sensible course of action, while the parliament could not make wise choices. This is precisely the true picture why the Tsai government cannot engage in consultations.

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