The Tsai Gov’t’s Policies for Electioneering Are in Full Swing

 The Tsai Gov’t’s Policies for Electioneering Are in Full Swing

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

September 9, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

For several days back to back, newspapers’ front page headlines have all been about "beneficial policies” released by the Tsai government. Among them, the Cabinet meeting has just passed the second wave of expanded subsidies for the fall/winter domestic tourism program, including "free lodging when taking the High Speed Rail” and "gift coupons of NT$200 when visiting night markets." The Ministry of Transportation and Communications, on the other hand, has introduced a stimulus program for "injecting NT$10 billion in financing" to help hotel and lodging operators to survive the cold winter of recession, and starting from October, will cut the vehicle fuel tax for tour bus operators for one year. The Council of Agriculture will ease the qualifications for farmers’ insurance and will push the "farmers’ retirement system," allowing farmers to receive retirement pensions in addition to the subsidies for elderly farmers. However, speaking bluntly, the reality is extremely cruel: the offer of such subsidies and benefits, in fact, is to cover up the predicament that the public has encountered in realistic living.

In such a short period of time, the fact that the Tsai government can pick from its pocket so many money-spending policies for electioneering purposes is astonishing. President Tsai relying, only on her "anti-China" policies, has owned a huge arsenal, beating her opponents to the extent of not knowing what to do. What is the most ludicrous is that the cold winter of recession confronting tourism, sight-seeing, and travel operators is precisely induced by anti-China policies; however, Tsai Ing-wen does not think of revising its existing path, while endlessly utilizing unorthodox subsidies to create a facade of peace and prosperity. Such an approach has, on the one hand, harmed the nation’s finances, and on the other, twisted the tourism market; besides, how long could it last?

For the subsidy measures introduced recently, the Tsai government has also cast the net over the younger communal groups. However, the three new big policies not only overlap with the existing childcare policies of various counties and cities, but also focus entirely on subsidies for individual households, not shouldering responsibility for improving the holistic childcare system and facilities; this is short-sighted and beneficial for the near term. The problem is that the government wants to wholeheartedly woo the younger communal groups in order to win their votes; the issue of more macro fairness and justice in society are thus compressed to become flat, and the rationality in policy-making has also been twisted into a shape beyond recognition by such myopic thinking.

With the approaching elections, if the policies introduced by the powers-that-be are not convincing to the public because the direction is slanted and harms social justice, it is very likely to elicit strong side effects. The Tsai government in the recent period has tossed out subsidies of various shapes and colors; they all are not positive governance with deep pondering and mature considerations, being full of the smell of opportunist electioneering. Such policies may perhaps woo a smattering of voters, once they are too widespread, they would make the wider public feel resentment and shame. After all, knowing only how to dispense benefits before the election day is not only an expression of diffidence, but also a proof of lacking the capability of governance.

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