Lai Ching-te’s Take-Over as Premier Signifies Tsai Ying-wen Loses Her Route

  Lai Ching-te’s Take-Over as Premier Signifies Tsai Ying-wen Loses Her Route

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

September 5, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

Rumors about Lai Ching-te's take-over of the Cabinet have been circulating for several months; Tuesday, it finally became a confirmed fact. Tsai Ying-wen and Lin Chuan have been close friends; however, the issue of a Cabinet reshuffle has been dragging on, and finally Tsai could not escape from her poor performance of governance, leading to plummeting support ratings hitting rock bottom. This cold and cruel fact would make it difficult to face next year’s elections; hence, Lin Chuan stepped down. From such a long period of procrastination, we could see that Tsai Ying-wen had little left up her sleeves and couldn’t have produced a better candidate after searching here and there, so she could only have made a compromise amid threats from factions, choosing Lai Ching-te. Whether the two can amicably cooperate will be something to be tested by time.

Earlier, Lai Ching-te declined to join the Cabinet as Vice Premier, and now, however, he directly conquered the high ground. On the surface, he had the best of luck; nevertheless, success and failure in politics often is not decided by the stature of one’s post. Now, Lai Ching-te has to play a major role alone, yet he still lacks experiences related to decision-making and coordination of the central government; for him, the heavy burden and challenge of this Premiership is naturally exceedingly arduous.

Lai Ching-te lacks experiences in international affairs, diplomacy, fiscal-economic affairs, and cultural levels; in cross-Strait relations, his Taiwan independence inclinations may possibly drag Tsai Ing-wen's cross-Strait path to a more rigid and hardcore position which is detrimental to Taiwan.

It is not difficult to imagine that in this Cabinet reshuffle, the factional strife within the DPP for change was heated. This also compelled Tsai Ying-wen to retreat from her path. The problem is, could the decisiveness of policy-making and implementation that were not exhibited by the Tsai-Lin team be fulfilled under the Tsai-Lai team? For this, we are afraid, only time will tell.

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