A Gov’t that Does Not Admit Mistakes Is a Disaster for the Country

 A Gov’t that Does Not Admit Mistakes Is a Disaster for the Country

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

December 10, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

Following the rise of the DPP, it brought into Taiwan’s politics the word “sophistry”, which has since become deep-rooted, hard to break. After Chen Shui-bian stepped down for corruption and the DPP lost power in disgrace, the DPP sill refused to apologize and do soul-searching, even using "human rights" as a pretext to forcefully seek medical parole for Chen, allowing him to move about freely outside of prison and talk at will. When Tsai Ing-wen took office, she proclaimed "humility, humility and humility" and that the people could "pound the table" to the government. However, when the general public expressed their dissatisfaction, the government, nevertheless, often mobilized cyber warriors and used barricades, even directly zipped people's mouths. All these, we could get a glimpse from the recent developments of the Slow Yang's cyber warrior case.

Slow Yang directed her cyber warriors to attack TECO in Osaka, directly leading to Su Chii-cherng's suicide because he could not bear the humiliation; Slow Yang and her cyber warriors have thus been prosecuted. To this, the DPP did not say a word of apology, only busying to distance itself, from up on down, from Yang, claiming that it had no tanglings with Yang at all. The Foreign Ministry (MOFA), on the other hand, not only failed to condemn this incident, but argued that no inference should be made that cyber warriors caused the suicide of Su Chii-cherng; MOFA even sent for a heavy national police detachment to guard MOFA’s gates, pinching the fingers of a legislator who went to protest with her colleagues. What is even more astonishing is that KMT legislator Chen Yi-ming, in the commotion, pushed and shoved a policewoman in plain clothes, causing her to nearly fall, yet he conversely became a suspect who must apologize.

Look again, the Interiors Ministry’s demands that the police file criminal charges against Chen Yi-min for "obstruction of official functions” is a logic completely disproportionate. First, the Tsai government could mobilize hundreds of police officers to prevent demonstrators from entering MOFA, but could even elected members of the Legislative Yuan be stopped outside of MOFA’s gates? Second, the policewoman in question did not wear a uniform while gathering evidence. Although she claimed to be a member of the national police detachment, the public had no way to verify the authenticity of her identity. How could that constitute "obstructing official functions"? Third, the Tsai government has been indifferent to Su Chii-cherng's suicide, and now, nevertheless, attached such importance to a police woman, obviously disproportionate. In fact, it was only utilizing this incident to make a mountain out of a molehill.

In the three and a half years of Tsai Ing-wen’s governance, she caused the freezing of cross-Strait relations, making the tourism industry sharply decline, with cross-Strait relations shrouded in shadows of espionage. She wantonly revised the Labor Standards Act, impacting various trades, and doled out patronage to cronies and fat cats, while forcefully excluding dissidents. Then, on the pretext of fiscal difficulties, she used an ax to cut pensions for retired military, civil servants and public school teachers, while wantonly issuing checks and rampantly dispensing various subsidies for electioneering purposes. Do these moves look like a government that had in mind a long-term governance of a country? In the local elections last yearend, the voters used ballots to negate the DPP’s governance, yet the Tsai government has never apologized or admitted mistakes, conversely doubling down: she sent people voted out of office by vox populi to serve in high posts in the Cabinet, using “a sense of losing one’s country” to blackmail Taiwan’s populace, using fictitious figures to embellish her performance of governance in order to swindle her next four-years term.

Taiwan's wages have not been hiked for 20 years; Chen Shui-bian's corruption and fraud scams were the fountainhead of disasters. A political party that does not admit mistakes is a disaster for the country; now do we want to enter the second vicious circle?

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