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Ma Ying-jeou under
fire for not keeping campaign promises
By Vincent Y. Chao / Staff Reporter
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors are urging the president to
complete an earlier round of campaign promises before announcing a new lavish
investment package for southern Taiwan.
“He [President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九)] has bounced his checks on every single one of
his 2008 election promises in Tainan County [now Greater Tainan]. None have been
completed,” Greater Tainan Councilor Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) told a press
conference yesterday.
Holding up campaign fliers from Ma’s election bid in 2008, Lin pointed to broken
promises on everything from removing highway tolls to building new regional
expressways.
“Most of these promises had two to three year deadlines, but with only one year
left before [the next] election, we haven’t even seen work begin on some of the
projects,” Lin said, speaking in the wake of a new spending promise unveiled by
Ma’s campaign.
The president announced on Sunday in Greater Kaohsiung he would invest NT$740
billion (US$25.6 billion) to accelerate development in southern parts of the
country.
With southern Taiwan a pan-green stronghold, DPP lawmakers have been quick to
label the promise as an election tactic designed to sway votes ahead of next
year’s presidential election.
At the press conference yesterday, Greater Kaohsiung DPP Councilor Kang Yu-cheng
(康裕成) said the president was “good at giving out checks, but was unconvincing in
actually carrying them out.”
Construction projects, such as the completion of Expressway No. 84 between
Greater Tainan’s Beimen (北門) and Yujing (玉井), and a new interchange in Yongkang
District (永康) were supposed to have been finished last year or this year.
Instead, 17km remain unfinished along the expressway, the Directorate-General of
Highways says, and construction has yet to start on the interchange, the
National Freeway Bureau says.
Lin said that even simple projects, like phasing out two of four freeway toll
stations in Sinshih (新市) and Baihe (白河), Greater Tainan, have not been carried
out despite repeated pressure from local representatives.
Work has also been slow on efforts to create a NT$263.2 billion special trade
area in Greater Kaohsiung that was originally expected to create up to 170,000
jobs and NT$769 billion in private investment, Kang said.
“No money was budgeted for the trade area at all in 2010. And this year, only
NT$5.8 billion was budgeted, less than 2 percent of the total needed. It’s
coming close to amounting to a bounced check ... something we are seeing more
and more of,” she said.
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