Civil Service in Peril: Taiwan Needs More Like Wu Pei-jung

  Civil Service in Peril: Taiwan Needs More Like Wu Pei-jung

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

September 20, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

Chang Tien-chin, vice chairman of the Transformational Justice Commission (TJC), in an internal meeting he called, labeled himself as "Dongchang” (a Ming Dynasty secret police organization equivalent to the Gestapo), wanting to utilize the TJC to purge Hou You-yi, the KMT’s candidate for the New Taipei City mayoral race. This outrageous, unthinkable situation was exposed by Wu Pe-jung, a staffer at TJC, who recorded the proceedings of the meeting, eliciting an uproar in both the media and society; Chang Tien-chin scrambled to step down. At the same time, Chang Shih-yueh, a member of Chang Tien-chin’s Dongchang committee, as early as August 17, armed with only an official communication, led a team attempting to search the National Policy Foundation, the KMT think tank, but was rebuffed because the whole thing violated due process of law; in the end, he was aware of the difficulties and retreated. From this incident, people could see TJC’s self-aggrandizement and how it acted without the slightest of sophistication. This incident, besides revealing the side of the DPP’s abuse of authority and high-handedness, also underscored the heavy crisis in the civil service of Taiwan.

Take Hsu Chun-ju for instance. She is chief secretary of TJC involved in the Dongchang incident. Hsu is a government employee; her position is a protected civil servant of the state. Lamentably, she chose to show loyalty to Chang Tien-chin, and not loyalty to the Republic of China, or loyalty to the people of Taiwan. If what Hsu has reflected is the crisis of “civil servants becoming political hatchet men,” then the suicide of Su Chii-cherng, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Osaka, reflected a crisis of “civil servants being scapegoats.” Frank Hsieh is a politically-appointed envoy to Japan, having the effect of being the "alter ego of the President." The influence of such political appointees is no less than that of the Foreign Minister, and thus they must shoulder the responsibility for success or failure. This is why, when Frank Hsieh was lambasted in a tempest of Kansai Airport, he attempted to distance himself and evade, pushing responsibilities to the TECO office in Osaka, but eliciting a huge public uproar.

This is how political appointees used their political strength to deal with civil servant subordinates; this behavior, in the eyes of the civil service system, can only be described as “How sad it is!” The relationship between political appointees and civil servants ought to be a partnership. At the present, the DPP, in the distribution of authority, does not trust civil servants, wanting to put their “own people” in charge; in carrying out functions, however, it uses the approach of carrots and sticks to force civil servants to become the accomplices of "Dongchang," while at the time of assigning accountability, however, it uses political means to deal with the defenseless civil service subordinates, turning political appointees into officials with authority but no accountability, while civil servants with accountability but no authority. What a contradictory situation!

Although Wu Pei-jung is not a civil servant, she had the courage to be a whistle-blower, willing to record Chang Tien-chin’s outrageous statements and expose them; such courage is worthy of emulation on the part of all civil servants. Civil servants’ disobedience and initiative to expose illegalities is the most important force to check and balance abuses. On the one hand, it serves as a check for the people to constrain abusive political appointees, forestalling the powers that be from abusing power and authority, leaving the state and the people in terror. On the other hand, it also serves to safeguard the civil servants themselves, not becoming the accomplices of those who abuse power and authority, or even scapegoats.

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