How Could Such a Foggy Cabinet Reorganization Achieve “Great Accomplishments”?

  How Could Such a Foggy Cabinet Reorganization Achieve “Great Accomplishments”?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 15, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Su Tseng-chang Cabinet assumed office yesterday. According to the established precedence of politics with courtesies in Taiwan, people seemingly should offer congratulations and expectations for the new political picture; however, when people witnessed Premier Su cavalierly complete the Cabinet line-up during the weekend, it would be difficult for the outside circles to offer such good wishes for great achievements and a bright future. Besides the so-called "Losers League," the Su Cabinet’s line-up, in its overwhelming majority, inherited the original team of the Lai Cabinet, even inviting Pan Wen-chung, the Education Minister who had resigned because of the "blocking Kuan case," to retake his post. It is questionable that such a team, lacking in new ideas, could produce any different report card in governance.

When Lai Ching-te insisted on resigning as premier, he said that only if he should leave, could President Tsai "break and make in great strides." Now he has left as he wished, but his successor Su Tseng-chang recruited the same troops from his original team, with more than 90% of the Cabinet members intact. If the public expected "break and make in great strides" following the local elections, the Su Cabinet, however, chose the path of "following Lai’s footsteps," seeking only to make a slight difference. If one didn’t even want to "break," may we ask, what’s left in the hope for “making great strides”?

The Su Cabinet let people feel the lack of sufficient freshness; besides the satirical comments about the "Losers League" and the overwhelming majority of the Cabinet members remained unchanged, what has astonished the public is that he asked Pan Wen-chung, who had stepped down because of the Kuan case, to come back and head the Education Ministry. When Tssai Ing-wen asked Su Tseng-chang to form a cabinet, outside circles criticized that the President had "emptied her bag" with no talent to use; at the same time, Su Tseng-chang asked Pan Wen-chung to re-emerge from retirement, further demonstrating that Premier Su also had an "empty bag," without an iota of thinking in making changes.

Nevertheless, Su Tseng-chang’s greatest challenge is to maintain his executive dignity and Cabinet autonomy under the situation that President Tsai would now and then step outside the demarcation lines to give instructions on executive decision-making, and to cultivate a relationship between the two from mutual tolerance to interactions of complementing each other. In Su Tseng-chang's reorganization of the Cabinet, the deployment he did most was in fact "retaining people" without presenting any new faces. Yesterday, he pronounced with pride and elation "I decided all members of the Cabinet," unwittingly exposing his vagueness and emptiness. Under the mentality of only seeking "no breaks," to talk about "making great strides" would be lavish wishful thinking. If Tsai Ing-wen is still determined to maintain her own path regardless, probably there is not much hope for the political situation in Taiwan to turn from falling to climbing in the coming year.

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