Gov’t Abuse of Power Will Become a Machine Manufacturing the Likes of Wu Maw-kuen and Wu Yin-ning

  Gov’t Abuse of Power Will Become a Machine Manufacturing the Likes of Wu Maw-kuen and Wu Yin-ning

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

May 25, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

President Tsai’s support ratings have nosedived, yet the government endlessly fabricates statistics trumpeting how happy Taiwan is. In actual situation, Taiwan is, in fact, regressing; from the abuse of authority by officials, political parties playing favoritism, oppressing others, doling out positions to cronies, disregarding the rule of law, etc., Taiwan’s democracy, which used to radiate glowing light, has become dim and bland. If President Tsai still does not constrain the behavior of officials, then the governance that is out of control will crumble Taiwan’s centripetal strength.

While the storm about the Education Ministry’s black hand extending into the campus of National Taiwan University (NTU) has yet to end, recently, news has been circulating that some top senior high schools have met administrative threats.

At the same time, an incident has also been reported that the selection committee members for NTU president were interviewed by the Taipei District Prosecutors Office "without official notification." It was not entirely surprising that the criminal justice system assisted in the “plucking Kuan Chung-ming case”; what is astonishing is that the Taipei District Prosecutors Office played the role of a political hatchet man, to the surprise of many, nakedly went to the forefront, omitting the required process of law, something even exceeding the highhandedness of Education Minister Wu Maw-kuen in comparison.

At the same time as the Tsai government with all efforts oppresses “those who are not us,” the Legislative Yuan, by coincidence, completed the legislative action on the amendment bill to the “Organic Rules Governing Missions Abroad” allowing missions abroad to add politically-appointed ministers (deputy ambassadors) as well as ministers of career Foreign Service. At the end of last year, the Legislative Yuan had already revised the “Statute Governing the Appointment of Diplomatic and Consular Officers in Missions Abroad,” adjusting upwards the ceiling of non-career Foreign Service Officers in missions abroad; now career Foreign Service has been further trampled upon, allowing the Tsai government to appoint the likes of Wu Yin-ning, who have not passed the Foreign Service exam and have no diplomatic experience to be ranking officers in missions abroad, drawing high salaries and serving as “commissars,” and even potentially presenting opportunities to evade supervision and manipulating diplomacy.

As known to everybody, now our country’s diplomatic situation is in dire straits, the principal reason lies in the mistaken high-echelon policies, and not because our missions abroad have not been working hard. Otherwise, since we only lost one diplomatic partner in eight years of the Ma Ying-jeou administration, why in the two years under the Tsai Ing-wen government did we lose four countries, including the Dominican Republic and Burkina Faso? When diplomatic partners are dwindling in number, capable Foreign Service Officers will have fewer and fewer opportunities to gain experience abroad, while the Tsai government added high positions to dole out to cronies. Wouldn’t it be the idea of promoting the "Wu Yin-ning experience" globally?

After the DPP came to power for the second time, the most obvious retrogression is lies right here. Besides arbitrarily setting up, outside of the established system, such government agencies dedicated to purges as the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committeeand Promotion of Transformational Justice Commission, and such extra-legal government agencies over and above the various ministries as the Office of the New Southward Policy and the Committee Promoting Elderly Care under the Cabinet, the idea is all the more intended to conveniently appoint DPP’s men, not minding the destruction of the Civil Service system, changing the rank of heads of sub-Cabinet government agencies to political appointees. So it is at the local level.

Furthermore, the Cabinet last month adopted the "Non-profit Corporation Bill," classifying both non-profit corporations set up by government having received enemy assets (Japanese) after 1949 and those set up with "government endowments" as non-profit corporations with "government endowments." In the future, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, China Technical Consultants, Inc., the Taiwan Postal Association, and the Taiwan Telecommunications Industry Development Association and other non-profit corporations not under government supervision and control would change the composition of their boards to be appointed by the government, forming another kind of "machine manufacturing the likes of Wu Yin-ning."

Now, in this era of “abuse of power rules supreme,” with wayward leadership, what is the rule of law and what is the path of righteousness have become very fuzzy and ambiguous.

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