Who Could Fend Off Tsai Ing-wen's Obstinacy and Arrogance?

 Who Could Fend Off Tsai Ing-wen's Obstinacy and Arrogance?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

December 12, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The credit card prodigy Slow Yang case has stirred up a tempest, becoming the talk of the town. President Tsai Ing-wen first said, "I don't know her", and then after netizens dug up a photo showing the two talking about Yang’s pet dog, she then changed her version, saying "no personal friendship." Judging from Slow Yang's role in the DPP, she of course had no qualifications to climb to the level of Tsai Ing-wen, then party chairwoman and now President of the Republic. However, credit card prodigy Slow Yang, after operating cyber warfare with "brilliant success", surprisingly encountered such ruthless distancing and jettisoning by the DPP; it could be imagined that she now was filled with mixed emotions.

Tsai Ing-wen has never conceded defeat, nor admitted mistakes; for this reason, after the nine-in-one local elections, Tsai Ing-wen's countermeasure was to cut off all factors unfavorable to her re-election bid. Through the Legislative Yuan, she “confiscated the plebiscite results”, through the criminal justice system, she intimidated rivals, through the Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Commission and the Transformational Justice Commission, she immobilized the KMT, and through the Mainland Affairs Council and the Foreign Ministry, she pinned “fellow travelers labels” on the Blue camp in one stroke. Step by step, she has engaged in cut-throat tactics; for this reason, Lai Ching-te turned from victory to defeat in the primary, and then was compelled to team up with her. Even though Tsai Ing-wen resigned from the party chairmanship, intraparty disputes have still been settled by her; even the nominations for at-large legislators on the party list had to be ironed out at the official presidential residence, to be gaveled down by her alone. Tsai Ing-wen's high-handedness and dictatorship can go over all rules of the game. Just like when she directed the whole picture at the National Affairs Conference on Judicial Reform early in the first year of her term, only those votes conforming to her wishes could stand. This was precisely the beginning of judicial reform being reduced to a laughing stock.

Precisely because of Tsai Ing-wen's authoritarian style of disregarding public opinion and disregarding justice, although Foreign Minister Joseph Wu lost five diplomatic partners in a row, he did not have to step down to assume responsibility. Instead, he allowed a dedicated diplomat to be forced to end his own life. A top representative to Japan with effrontery has still remained in his sinecure post. This is the main reason why Slow Yang’s cyber warriors case aroused public fury.

Tsai Ing-wen's obstinancy has made all officials in her court brazen to be hatchet men for the powers-that-be, but not brazen enough to carry out their duties to strive for justice and fairness for the country. Precisely amid such twisted atmospherics, Taiwan's democracy has repeatedly been attacked and harmed; the resources of the state are being distributed to line private pockets. How could Taiwan not be mired in "chaos"?

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