Tsai’s Nominees for Control Yuan: Contradictions and Absurdities

  Tsai’s Nominees for Control Yuan: Contradictions and Absurdities

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 17, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

President Tsai Ing-wen’s eleven make-up nominees for the Control Yuan on January 17^th passed the Legislative Yuan in toto under the boycott of both the KMT and PFP caucuses. This time, the nomination and confirmation processes looked like a kid's play; five of the eleven nominees openly supported the abolition of the Control Yuan (CY), but gladly agreed to serve as CY members. What is even more ridiculous is that Chen Shi-meng, during the confirmation hearing, made outrageous statements, claiming that Chen Shui-bian "did not commit corruption" and threatening that he would in the future impeach those judges who had convicted top Green camp officials, and surprisingly, he won unanimous support from Green camp legislators. The vision of DPP legislators left people speechless; Tsai Ing-wen's nomination of such a CY member was, however, an invitation to humiliation.

Such nominations basically reflected the contradictions and absurdities of President Tsai's national identity. While not identifying with the Republic of China (ROC), Tsai serves as ROC President, enjoying the remuneration of the Republic of China, utilizing the powers of ROC President to mutilate the system under the Constitution of the Republic of China, and using the authority of the President to create social divisions. Based on the same logic, someone, not identifying with the value of the existence of the Control Yuan, however, is pleased to serve as a CY member, enjoying the remuneration of a Cabinet minister, while doing things he and his colleagues consider to be irrelevant, and wanting to utilize the powers of a CY member to pursue a political manhunt against specific judges. Could such a phenomenon occur in a normal democratic country?

If people believed this is only an ordinary battle for spoils, or is just the last melodrama as the CY’s swan song, but did not see the government system being incessantly infected by viruses, nor did they see the repeated demolition of democratic values, then the momentum for Taiwan to move forward would be little by little compressed and exhausted. Having witnessed the make-up confirmation of CY members, we could only make such an appraisal.

We would like to remind President Tsai of a huge contradiction in her governance. With regard to the continuous slide in her popularity rating, she stressed that she was persisting in "reforms," but did not care to listen to people’s voices even a little bit; on the other hand, she has again and again made concessions to the pro-independence faction in the matter of policy decisions and personnel appointments, being mindless to leave the government system mired in paralysis. Contrasting the two, President Tsai favors the pro-independence faction over "vox populi," which is an extremely unwise slant; Chen Shi-meng’s words and deeds are a case in point. 

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