Shoving Everything to the "Preceding Administration," the Tsai Gov’t’s Old Habit Should Be Discarded

  Shoving Everything to the "Preceding Administration," the Tsai Gov’t’s Old Habit Should Be Discarded

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 21, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

A government claiming to be "a reformer," however, uses the "preceding administration" as its shield whenever encountering resistance; this is a ploy that the DPP has been apt to employ. Being repeated for long, this has also been seen through by the public. In the latest incident, when Chen Chi-mai’s election prospects in Kaohsiung are in the doldrums, President Tsai went down south to stump for him; she surprisingly lambasted the KMT for “delaying construction in Kaohsiung” during its long-term rule two decades ago, sounding as if the DPP were not the ruling party in Kaohsiung in the recent 20 years. A few days ago, when Premier Lai Ching-te announced the suspension of the construction of the coal-fired Shenao power plant, he ignored the fact that the plant had been approved during Su Tseng-chang’s premiership 12 years ago; conversely he accused that it was Eric Chu who decided the matter during his deputy premiership after Su Tseng-chang. How could this kind of shoving and evading tactics convince the public?

In many policies pushed for by the Tsai government, once encountering external criticism, the DPP will shove everything to the "preceding administration," which seems to have become a modus operandi. Summing up, once encountering problems or resistance, using the KMT as a stepping stone and an ATM, the DPP has three modes in using the KMT as an "electoral ATM": First, when the policy is not welcomed, it will say, by way of evading, that the “matter was decided by the erstwhile KMT government.” Second, if it has nothing to do at all with the KMT, the DPP will say “the KMT did not reform; only the DPP would do something to the extent of offending the people." Third, for those policies launched by the preceding administration welcomed by the public, then the DPP would harvest the achievements as its own with a smile.

Since the first direct presidential election in 1996, the aggregate time under the DPP administration has been more than ten years; yet it pretended to be snow white with no dust or stains at all; can the people believe it? Self-deception is addictive; when the DPP is accustomed to using the "preceding administration" as a stepping stone, it would not even know where it stands physically.

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