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EDITORIAL: Officials
must remain neutral
With the election campaign season approaching, the incumbent administration’s
neutrality has emerged as an issue that needs to be kept under close public
scrutiny.
Aside from keeping a close eye out for any abuse of administrative resources
that could arise as a result of Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) acting as President Ma
Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) running mate while at the same time keeping his post as head
of the Executive Yuan, attention also needs to be paid to the remarks and
conduct of various government officials and agencies to ensure they do not
violate administrative neutrality or exploit administrative resources for
bipartisan electoral gains.
Some incidents have recently given rise to such concerns among the general
public.
First, we saw the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issue a statement on
Thursday last week claiming the local media had falsely reported that Member of
the European Parliament Hans van Baalen had said he would vote for Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) if he were
Taiwanese. Public embarrassment followed just days later when Van Baalen openly
dismissed the ministry’s statement, asserting that he did indeed make such a
declaration.
The ministry subsequently cited international common courtesy as a reason why
foreign nationals should not get involved in or interfere in other countries’
politics.
However, it is interesting to note that the ministry’s statement also mentioned
that, during his meeting with Ma last week, Van Baalen had expressed warm words
to Ma and said he hoped he would get re-elected. So it is acceptable when a
foreign national expresses a wish for Ma to win the election, but warrants
action from the ministry when the same foreign national voices support for the
opposition leader?
Van Baalen was after all only stating his personal opinion, and did not violate
the Election and Recall Act (選罷法) that bans foreigners from publicly stumping
for election candidates — as Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams had done in
2004, when she was fined for stumping for the DPP presidential campaign.
MOFA’s duty should be to safeguard and elevate the nation’s dignity and
international standing, not to pay attention to which foreign national heaps
praise on opposition leaders. It would be truly shameful if the nation’s foreign
ministry is to start seeing through bipartisan lenses and act as if it were a
branch of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Another recent case stirred up controversy by potentially violating
administrative neutrality. That was the case of New Taipei City (新北市) official
Lee Chien-lung (李乾龍) who, under the name of a national township chief alliance,
last week hosted a banquet for hundreds of township and district chiefs during
which support for the Ma-Wu ticket was voiced.
While Lee argued that the event was a routine gathering that took place outside
his working hours and was therefore not in any way a violation of administrative
neutrality or an act of bribery, the public’s impression is that this should not
have happened.
With both the KMT and the DPP campaigns picking up steam, all government
officials and agencies should be reminded of their duties and their jobs on the
taxpayers’ payroll — to serve the nation, not a specific political party or
politician.
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