Ten Questions for President Tsai: If You Could "Start Again"

 Ten Questions for President Tsai: If You Could "Start Again"

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 22, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The election campaign has been tense; although the DPP has the advantage of being the ruling party, it has been running with difficulties. Without waiting for the results of the election showdown, outside circles are already in the process of inventorying who should be held accountable; within the DPP, many point to Tsai Ing-wen.

The social floodgate for dissatisfaction has been cracked open, proving that the people want change. Judging from the atmospherics in society, the wave is enormous for "giving the DPP a little lesson," obviously showing that many people have become fed up with the authoritarian bullying of the Tsai government’s governance. Here let us list ten instances to ask President Tsai: If you had the opportunity to start over, would you still ram through everything as you did before?

Instance 1: The plucking Kuan incident. "History will remember" how university autonomy was intervened in such a manner.

Instance 2: The incident of closing down the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Rumors were spreading all over that the DPP had been eyeing the art treasures of the National Palace Museum, appointing a pseudo-man of culture full of political leanings to manage the national treasures; what are the true intentions?

Instance 3: Irresponsible energy policy. Coal burning aggravates air pollution; "using Guantang in exchange for Shenao" explains that the energy policy has lost its direction.

Instance 4: Undermining the rule of law and the legal system. The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, the Central Election Commission, the Transformational Justice Commission, and the Financial Supervisory Commission all know the law, yet play with the law; they have either been frequently defeated in administrative lawsuits, or blatantly ignored court rulings, earning a critical comment that "law graduates disdain the law.” President Tsai talked loquaciously about judicial reforms, yet created a phenomenon that "Grand Justices refuse to take up cases for judicial review"; legal circles mourn in unison that "we witness the collapse of the Constitution before our eyes."

Instance 5: No division between the party and government. The DPP has set no limits in its tactics of "using the instrument of the state for the benefit of the party"; all independent agencies of the government have become the "affiliated organizations" of the ruling party.

Instance 6: Disregarding the survival of enterprises. The stupid and foolhardy revisions to the Labor Standards Act relating to “one fixed holiday, one flexible day-off” caused a triple-loss situation for new e-commerce, old industries and grassroots labor: the ossified cross-Strait policies have all the more made the lives of many tourism services industries difficult.

Instance 7: Oppressing freedom of speech. Tsai Ing-wen has said that freedom of speech is "what the people of Taiwan fought for with their lives"; now, however, it has denigrated to monitoring Facebook by the National Security Bureau, interviewing of TV channel executives by the NCC for election news, and the reinforced wire-tapping by the Justice Ministry through amending the Communication Security and Surveillance Act.

Instance 8: The government wantonly squanders money to push for Forward-looking Infrastructure Construction projects and subsidizes the New Southward Policy.

Instance 9: Cronyism. In order to court favor with the pro-Taiwan independence faction, the Tsai government nominated the ideologically biased Chen Shi-meng for Control Yuan member, in order to court favor with various factions, Tsai appointed a large number of protégés of Lai Ching-te and Chen Chu, considering the state as her private home.

Instance 10: Doling out an annual salary of NT$2.5 million to employ Wu Yin-ning as general manager of the Taipei Farmers Market, dubbed the "most expensive intern."

Similar instances abound; all this is the principal driver of the phenomenon that "Hating the DPP" has become "the biggest political party in Taiwan." We use the abovementioned ten instances to ask President Tsai, and if the answer is still "I will never turn back," then, should the voters still have any pity?

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