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Editorial: Needed:
Better policies, less PR
Nobody could accuse President Ma Ying-jeou (°¨^¤E) of a lack of confidence in his
own abilities. Not even news that his popularity rating has now sunk to 19
percent could dent his belief that he is doing a good job of running the
country. For him, the problem is that the public simply does not understand the
government¡¦s policies or how well they are working. For him, it is a failure of
getting the message across. This is why the Cabinet is currently racking its
brains trying to work out how best to package its policies and spin its
achievements.
The much-derided ¡§Economic Power-up Plan¡¨ ad, the brainchild of former Executive
Yuan spokesman Hu Yu-wei (J¥®°¶), was removed by YouTube after netizens complained
that it was fraudulent, in what was a rather unfortunate first for the
government. It tried to play it down, opting for the Hu-esque excuse of claiming
the ad had fulfilled its purpose of attracting attention to the stimulus plan,
and that there was no need to broadcast it anymore.
Now the Cabinet has come up with an even stranger plan: It wants to start a
Facebook campaign to ¡§unleash the potential of viral marketing¡¨ to spread its
message online using social media. It also wants each ministry to set up its own
Facebook fanclub, and it will give out rewards and sanctions depending on how
many ¡§fans¡¨ each ministry accumulates. Even before the campaign has started it
is causing untold headaches for government officials.
Imagining that you can equate hits on Facebook with performance in government is
just wrong-minded. You cannot translate these into some kind of measure of what
the public thinks of how well individual ministries are doing. It is good that
the government is trying to communicate its policies to the public, but it also
has to be able to distinguish between the sounds of applause and booing.
The trouble with the achievements the government is so proud of is who they
benefit, or don¡¦t, as the case may be. It has allowed the import of US beef, but
US beef is expensive and not the sort of thing most consumers can afford to put
on the table. It has secured US visa-waiver status, but people are not going to
rush out and fly to the US for a holiday just because it is now easier to do so.
Yes, it is a breakthrough of sorts, but only a few people will benefit from it.
It has reduced tariffs for certain kinds of fruit, but if government officials
were to get out of their offices and look around the wet markets and
supermarkets dotted around the city, they would find that these reductions have
not translated into lower prices: the benefit is being pocketed by the
importers, not the consumer. And postponing an increase in the minimum wage,
while popular among employers, has angered millions of workers.
Then there is the rising unemployment rate, the energy price hikes and the drop
in average salaries to the level they were 20 years ago: This is the kind of
thing that is impacting the lives of ordinary people. And just as people are
hearing that the Labor Pension Fund and other pension schemes are in danger of
going bankrupt, it has been revealed that retired military personnel, teachers
and public servants are not only to receive monthly pension payments equal to
almost 90 percent of the salary they were paid when working, in addition to an
18 percent preferential interest rate on their savings, but that they can also
expect a year-end bonus equal to 1.5 months¡¦ salary. This news has angered
around 70 percent of the population, who want to see this bonus, which is not
required by law, scrapped.
The government believes its low popularity ratings are because of its own
failure to communicate what it is doing right, but its attempts to blow its own
horn are infuriating. People want to drum into Ma and his government that ¡§it¡¦s
not the PR, stupid ... it¡¦s your policies and your inability to govern
properly.¡¨
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