United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

 

April 26, 2018


 Translation of an Excerpt

 

When the Legislative Yuan was in the process of confirming the nomination of the new prosecutor general, DPP legislator Tuan Yi-kang asked the nominee for the post, Chiang Hui-ming, whether he would apologize to countrymen for “prosecutors being tools of the rulers” under the authoritarian era in the past; Chiang Hui-ming declined on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to make a statement on “political cases” at his level. In a fury, Tuan Yi-kang claimed that he would not vote to support Chiang Hui-min to be the new prosecutor general.

 

It has been a long time since the DPP started to blackmail Taiwan using the “authoritarian era.” Since the establishment of the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and the Commission on the Promotion of Transformational Justice, the Tsai government has been utilizing the ruling power to benefit its cohorts and purge the opposition with ever increasingly blatant audacity. In the parliament, the DPP endlessly revises laws to facilitate the ruling party in extending its hands into more and more state institutions and non-profit corporations. In the Presidential Office and the Cabinet, the government utilizes personnel appointments to endlessly erode the offices of the state, constantly arranging elements of various factions to occupy high places. Viewed from these incidences, the DPP is in the process of climbing to the apex of a "new authoritarian system," and gradually morphing into that kind of regime that it itself used to accuse and despise in the past. The DPP doesn’t seem to be aware and believes that the public do not perceive it, either.

 

Negating everything from the authoritarianism era is the DPP’s prejudice and arrogance, and wantonly and wrongfully accusing the military, civil servants, and public school teachers is, on the other hand, its ignorance and high-handedness. The Tsai government withdrew the charges against the students in the Sunflower movement, while allowing police precinct chief Huang Sheng-yung, now retired, to carry on the court case for “homicide.” It allowed Education Minister Pan Wen-chung to step down because he failed to pluck Kuan Chung-ming and appointed Wu Maw-kuen to wield the executioner’s hatchet. These are truly instances of the rulers’ way of using officials as "tools" in the present tense progressive form. The DPP must ponder: if government officials cannot administer according to law, the problem is with the "rulers" and not the "tools." Precisely because it cannot see this clearly, the DPP is gradually being morphed into the kind of regime that it used to hate and despise.