|
EDITORIAL: Goverment
support hits new lows
The popularity of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is plummeting in
opinion polls and policy implementation has come to a standstill. The
administration is working hard to climb out of the hole and the public is
feeling the pain. The government is coming apart at the seams and even if a
policy is correct, its implementation is wrong, attracting even more criticism.
With news that the Labor Insurance Fund (LIF) is on the verge of bankruptcy,
everyone is directing their attention to the deteriorating finances of the labor
insurance and the labor pension systems. There is even news that a fund manager
at ING Securities Investment and Trust Co (ING SITC), the company appointed by
the government to manage the LIF, has been colluding with Ablerex Electronics, a
company traded on Taiwan’s over-the-counter market, racking up NT$210 million
(US$7.18 million) in losses and adding to the worries of workers already
concerned that they will lose their retirement pension. Although this is a case
of white-collar crime, the government is to blame for neglecting to manage and
monitor the handling of the fund after it was entrusted to ING SITC.
As the government brings order to the real estate transactions system, promoting
residential justice and the registration of actual transaction prices are
important tools for promoting a more open and transparent trading information
system. Offering open Internet access to real transaction prices is one
important way to let the public judge the health of the system. However, as soon
as the Web site set up by the Ministry of the Interior for this purpose went
online it crashed. This was a massive disappointment to members of the public
wanting to check transaction information and a major embarrassment for the
ministry.
Following the debacle, the ministry said the crash was caused by the huge number
of visitors searching for information or a hacking attack that caused the
servers to crash. In either case, this should have been planned for beforehand
and prevented. As a result of its lack of executive ability, the government
simply didn’t pay enough attention to these matters.
By contrast, granting Taiwan visa-waiver status is not a big issue for a country
like the US, but the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) still carried out a
massive mobilization of its staff and set up information counters at train
stations and night markets across Taiwan’s main cities to provide information
about the policy in person and help explain changes to the system. Furthermore,
when US Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez
visited Taiwan to sign a statement of intent, paving the way for more bilateral
trade and investment between the two countries, he also promoted the new
visa-waiver regulations and invited Taiwanese friends to Houston to see Jeremy
Lin (林書豪) play.
The AIT did not spend much money on advertising, instead planning a series of
activities in coordination with Sanchez’ visit, making it the focus of local
media attention. This was free advertising that was much more effective than all
the embedded advertising on which Taiwan’s government is spending huge amounts
of money.
By contrast, the Cabinet has spent in excess of NT$10 million promoting its
program to strengthen economic momentum to no avail, making it a laughing stock.
This shows that what matters most is effort, innovation and execution rather
than how much resources one uses.
This government has never been bothered by policy quality, practical execution,
management or supervision. All it does is spend money on advertising and image
building, without any control of the results.
No one should be surprised that support for such a government is plummeting.
|
