The Kaleidoscope of "Turning into Public Domain" Ends Up Being "Turning into Green"

  The Kaleidoscope of "Turning into Public Domain" Ends Up Being "Turning into Green"

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 16, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The DPP has recently forcibly passed an amendment bill to the Statute Governing the Organization for Irrigation Associations, turning local irrigation associations into government agencies and changing the personnel system into appointive officials “by the government.” This move has not only elicited a backlash from irrigation associations, but also from many agricultural economists and irrigation scholars, who signed a joint open letter in protest. The Tsai government argues that irrigation facilities were "public resources" and that turning local irrigation associations into government agencies was more reasonable. This kind of rhetoric is specious logic; besides exposing the DPP's self-interests, it further showed that turning things into the "public domain" had been jettisoned by the Tsai government.

With regard to the fate of turning local irrigation associations into government agencies, the public can also get an inkling by looking at the cases of the Public Television Service (PTS) and the Chinese Television Service (CTS). In 1998, the government established the PTS for the purpose of providing the public media outlet services free from the contamination of commercialization and political bias; this is the goal of "turning into the public domain." Earlier, under the maneuverings of Chen Yu-xiu, Chairman of the PTS Group, Kuo Chien-hung, the general manager of CTS, was relieved of his duties; Kuo fought back in a fury, claiming that CTS and PTS had one after another been reduced to vassals of Formosa TV (FTV), becoming the “three Taiwan independence TV stations” in the words of Kuo Bei-hong, Chairman of FTV and a Taiwan independence movement element.

Just imagine “turning into the public domain" was originally a concept diametrically opposed to "turning into partisan operations" and "turning into pro-Taiwan independence movement." However, through the DPP government's dexterous linking, it could have accomplished the seamless surgery of contradictions in one fell swoop. Three decades ago, Chiang Ching-kuo delegated the authority to appoint irrigation officials to localities; this was "returning the government to the people." More than three decades later, Tsai Ing-wen retrieved the autonomy of irrigation associations; this is "usurping the government from the people." Using phony “turning into the public domain" to achieve the objective of "turning into Green," could this be self-styled as reform?

A political party loudly shouted “turning into the public domain" while in opposition, and pushed with every effort for "nationalization" while in government in order to achieve the political goal of "turning into Green." This kind of trilogy is precisely a strategy employed by the DPP to transfer the management of national resources to the private coffers of a political party. At the juncture when President Tsai Ing-wen was liquidating the old accounts for “national coffers channeling to party coffers” of the early years under the Kuomintang in the name of "transformational justice," what the Tsai government has now been doing is a veritable replica. Three decades since Taiwan's democratization, this retrogressive move is all the more shameful and embarrassing.

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