Lin Jia-lung's Brute Arrogance Is Only a Corner of the Tsai Gov’t’s High-handedness

 Lin Jia-lung's Brute Arrogance Is Only a Corner of the Tsai Gov’t’s High-handedness

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 28, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Ministry of Communications and Transportation (MOTC) forcibly pushed for several "money pit style" transportation construction projects before the election time, and has repeatedly skipped the review procedures, undermining the mechanism for oversight. MOTC’s rude approach exceeded review committee member Chang Sheng-hsiung’s patience and forbearance, ending in his resignation in a rage. However, MOTC Minister Lin Jia-lung not only failed to listen to his advice, but also lambasted him, saying "individual review committee member's opinion overriding the government is like putting the cart before the horse." These remarks ignited a backlash from scholars in the transportation circles; in just a few days, close to a thousand scholars co-signed a statement, demanding that the government respect professionalism, rebuilding the open review mechanism for transportation construction projects.

Lin Jia-lung has been MOTC Minister for not quite a year; transportation is not his field of expertise, yet in just a few months, he has pushed for, one after another, the southern extension of the High-Speed Rail to Pingtung, Taiwan Railroad extension to Yilan and other policy decisions, and adopted several railroad elevation projects, costing hundreds of billions of NT dollars, yet frequently skipping the regular review procedures. Lin Jia-lung, even disregarding the dire straits of local finances, advocated deleting the review threshold for "self-liquidating ratio." All these are highly-risky acts. For this reason, Chang Sheng-hsiung, a professor at Tamkang University who served as a review committee member, while attending a review committee session for the Taoyuan Railroad underground project a couple of days ago, publicly announced his resignation, for the reason that such an oversight mechanism "would pass any project plans", thus having not much significance.

Lin Jia-lung's rudeness reflects in reality only a corner of the Tsai government's high-handedness. Those that are destroying the oversight mechanism for major construction projects, besides MOTC, also include other ministries. The committee on environmental assessment under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was reorganized last August 1^st ; the EPA seized the opportunity to sweep out the members who strictly guarded the gates, then recruited "friendly" committee members. Verily in several environmental assessment cases since August, there have been no more reoccurrences of the scenes like last year’s Shen’ao coal-fired power plant and the CPC Taiwan LNG receiving station in Taoyuan, and other cases in which expert members on the committee confronted their government appointed colleagues; nearly every case passed muster.

Allowing Lin Jia-lung, won had lost in a local election, to be promoted to the central government, signifies President Tsai's disregard for public opinion; allowing a politician who likes pomposity and craves achievements to head MOTC is, nevertheless, trampling on professionalism. It's not difficult for people to imagine that, considering the messy endgame of the foot of the mountain railroad line Lin Jia-lung left in Taichung, which ended as a subject of exchange of barbs between the Blue and Green, Lin Jia-lung's responsibility for squandering NT$70 billion to build useless construction, nevertheless, could have muddled through. Because in the long river of time, the tangling of people and things will be difficult to untangle. This is precisely the reason why an audacious politician fears nothing; if he can grasp the interests he himself has wanted in the shortest possible time, it pays.

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