Where Is the Core Thought for the Forward-Looking Construction Plan?

  Where Is the Core Thought for the Forward-Looking Construction Plan?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

July 17, 2017

 Translation of an Except

The Cabinet proposed a special budget of NT$108.9 billion for phase one of the forward-looking construction plan. Although the DPP caucus rammed the budget bill though the last Legislative Yuan (LY) extraordinary session for committee review, Premier Lin Chuan has not been able to mount the podium to deliver his budget report. In vetting the causes, plainly speaking, it was that the Cabinet behaved in a very high-handed fashion, railroading the legislative action on the budget bill. In the first battle in the war over the forward-looking plan, Lin Chuan acted with self-assurance, believing that “if the head passes, the body will follow,” attempting to put the forward-looking plan on the road first anyway, but the people’s questions regarding "In what way is it forward-looking?" have never ended.

The DPP caucus referred the first phase budget directly to committee review, attempting to rely on its supermajority in the LY to railroad the bill. However, if the fundamental question of the crudely-drafted forward-looking plan which deviates from reality and the high-handed decision-making is not resolved, the result would be endless grave consequences.

If the forward-looking plan is going to be "laying down the foundation for Taiwan’s development in the next three decades" as claimed by Tsai Ing-wen, then the Tsai government must present a more sophisticated core thinking and scientific foundation so that the people will know what problems in the world the government is planning to solve. Just look at the new items added in an opportune fashion, such as food safety and sub-replacement birth rate. We see just going through the motions everywhere. It seems that they have been added to preempt the opposition parties’ further criticisms, thus squandering money without even second thought. Take the item of "sub-replacement birth rate” for instance. The Cabinet earmarked NT$200 million for “baby’s diapers" and publicity expenses, but for strengthening community nurseries, the budget is only NT$180 million. To resolve the issues of the sub-replacement birth rate with a budget for diapers, it seems that the Tsai government doesn’t even know why the young generations "do not want to have babies"!

With the crudeness of the forward-looking plan’s special budget, if the LY wants to ram the budget bill through the LY, it will be a calamity.

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