“Three King Solomons” Could Only Produce Such a New Cabinet!

  “Three King Solomons” Could Only Produce Such a New Cabinet!

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

July 4, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

Amid Typhoon Maria, Premier Lai Ching-te gained two more days to plan his Cabinet reshuffle; however, the line-up made public yesterday did not bring many surprises. There are two reasons for this: First, the new appointees are nearly all old faces in the Tsai government, only moving the positions of the chess pieces on the board, with the fundamental structure unchanged. Second, with such a deployment, it is apparent that the DPP aimed at the year-end local elections, and not governance of the nation, focusing on "propaganda" rather than "achievements"; the public can only wait to be propagandized.

Why was the Cabinet reshuffle, which looked extensive in scale on the surface, unable to give the public a feeling of a fresh look? The crux of the matter is that the DPP government, with over two years in office, has never stepped out from its stratosphere and comfort circle in personnel appointments, being able to use only musical chairs in a small circle, the public of course could see through this. Taking a step further, this is not only a problem of vision, but also a problem of open-mindedness. The Tsai government knows full-well that its own governance has encountered bottlenecks, winning no identification from the public. Logically speaking, the powers that be should open even further their minds to seek talent from outside circles, enabling more pluralistic thinking in governance to be injected into the government's decision-making. However, the DPP, on the reverse, chose to use musical chairs to reshuffle the Cabinet, which ended up with the same batch of people. What new look has this reshuffle exhibited?

Since the Tsai government came to office, the Cabinet has undergone several reshuffles, large and small. It could be seen that everytime it has moved by revolving around the magnetic fields of the “three Solomons” of Tsai, Lai and Chen; this reshuffle is not the first time. With such personnel arrangements, it will be inevitable for people to worry about the "factionalization" of positions of the state, and even with vision being rendered to a "small circle."

Especially, in this reshuffle, Premier Lai did not have the slightest consideration on the aspect of economic development-- and this is precisely the weakest link in the current Tsai government. At his press conference yesterday, Lai emphasized again and again that the Cabinet’s duty at the current stage was only "execution." Viewed from this point, Lai Ching-te’s vision of governance and capability of deployment truly let people down.

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