Taiwan Today

Less than a week after the closing of the ruling party's 13th National Congress, the ROC government announced, as expected, a major reshuffling of the cabinet. A total of fifteen positions at the ministerial level were involved, as well as the mayoralty of the Taipei special municipality. Included in the reshuffle were the vice premier, five important ministers (Interior, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Finance, and Economic Affairs), three ministers without portfolio, five chairmen of special agencies directly under the Executive Yuan, and the secretary-general of the cabinet. The pronouncement evoked widely mixed reactions from the press and political commentators. The new lineup was indeed younger, with the average age of portfolio-holding ministers dropping from the previous average of 58.7 years old to 55.9. Moreover, Ma Ying-jeou, the new chairman of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, is only 38 years old, something rarely, if ever, seen in Taiwan. Of the 15 new appointees, 12 have Ph.D. degrees from either American, European, or...Japanese universities. Because two of the three ministers who remained intact in the reshuffle also hold Ph.D. degrees, the ROC has one of the best-educated cabinets in the world. Eight of the new appointees are natives of the island province, the first time that Taiwan-born officials have formed a majority in the government's top hierarchy. In the past, certain portfolios seemed to be the province of mainland born leaders, while others always fell to those island-born. This tradition is now broken. The portfolios of Foreign Affairs and Finance were given to local-born individuals for the first time. Another new record was set as well: a female economist, Shirky Kuo, took over the portfolio of Finance, thus becoming the first woman minister in the nation's history. As the other new ministers, she has an extensive background in both university teaching and government service, and particularly wide experience in economic planning and banking. In the past, a phalanx of such high-caliber leaders would certainly invite unquestioning applause from all observers. But not this time. The critics have raised numerous reservations about the new selections. First, they point out that the President seems to have personally handpicked the team. According to the Constitution, the President has the power to nominate the Premier, who after confirmation by the members of the Legislature should choose his own colleagues. Members of the press were critical of this, saying that although Mr. Yu Kuo-hwa was retained as the Premier, the new cabinet was Mr. Lee Teng-hui's. Second, although all the new appointees possess outstanding academic qualifications and have served in important government posts for quite some time, some of them seemed to have been assigned to the wrong places. The new ministers of Economic Affairs, Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development were specially singled out for such criticism. Third, the new officials are in fact old faces, and few of them, if any, are particularly noted for espousing more liberal ideas. In addition, the majority are scions of rich and powerful families. Questions have also been raised concerning the appropriateness of including two brothers in the cabinet, and having the wife of the speaker of the parliament serve as a cabinet minister. There is some intimation that the cabinet reshuffle has ended the honeymoon between the press and President Lee Teng-hui. At any rate, for the first time in the nation's history, the President, and then the Premier, have felt it necessary to defend publicly their decisions. The official responses to the criticisms have been as follows: ▪ The President and the Premier did consult with each other about the candidates before the final decisions were made. The Premier did not just play a passive role, as reported in some newspapers. ▪ The selection of the team was based solely on personal merits, without taking into consideration where one was born or family background. With reference to the latter, it does not seem reasonable to penalize potential officials because they were born to wealth or power. ▪ It is unnecessary that ministers should be experts in the areas under their jurisdictions. Many foreign governments frequently rotate their ministers from one ministry to another in order to enlarge their vision. At the ministerial level, a generalist who can grasp problems quickly can often be expected to infuse new ideas and work methods into a bureaucracy encumbered with undesirable habits. ▪ The new cabinet arrangement, according to the President, is actually part of his forward-looking and long-term program of further elevating the economic strength of the nation. It combines political, economic, diplomatic and technical talent in a team that must be able to meet effectively all the challenges of the nation's development in the next three to four years. "I am very clear about the perspective of the future," said the President with complete confidence. It frequently happens in democratic societies that soon after the government has pronounced a major policy shift, the pollsters immediately begin busily tabulating the pros and cons from the results of their surveys, and opposition leaders spare no time in cooking up all kinds of reasons to attack whatever decisions have been made. Just as frequently, government leaders have to defend their decisions as best as they can, and through as many media as are available. All these scenes are now being enacted in Taiwan. Thus, whatever the merits or demerits of the recent cabinet reshuffle, one thing is already quite certain: freedom of speech and of the press, the cornerstone of democracy, has won another round.