#6-3-3

[spfcnaveiaa]

Sem Legendas ...

#GustavoF

[lettersfromtaiwan]

Ouch

This editorial from the staunchly pro-KMT pro-China United Daily News is astonishing on a number of accounts in its response to RDEC claims that President Ma has reached completion, or initial development, on 97% of his 2008 election promises ...

The Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) has said that of the 404 election promises presented by President Ma Ying-jeou during his 2008 campaign, 401 have either been achieved or have produced initial results, indicating some 97 percent of his goals have come to fruition. The public certainly has its share of doubts. If 97 percent of Ma's policies have truly been carried out, why haven't the people taken note? Why is Taiwan's economy still sluggish? And why is the government as inefficient as ever? For making the assessment, the RDEC should also be responsible for explaining why Ma's approval ratings have dropped to just 9 percent despite apparently making good on nearly all of his campaign promises.

I'm not sure I've ever seen the UDN take such a cynical hack at a Ma and party they worked so hard to put into power and protect the image of. It gets better though ...

Few remember the content of Ma's 404 election promises. What people do remember -- and talk about -- are his "6-3-3" pledges to reach 6 percent annual economic growth, bring unemployment down to below 3 percent and raise per capita income to US$30,000 by 2016. These have conspicuously failed to materialize. In fact, the majority of Ma's promises, including the NT$3 trillion (US$99.59 billion) 12 "iTaiwan projects," are simply means to achieve his "6-3-3" pledge. The government is doing nothing but deceiving itself by saying that its construction projects have shown results. 

One of the pitfalls of a catchy election promise is just that - it sticks in people's minds and long after he has left office Ma will likely still be taunted and pilloried for his '6-3-3' and '馬上就會好'.  For a man who so many think is obsessed with crafting his historical legacy and shaping how he will be remembered, those two slogans are figurative albatrosses around the neck.  Amazingly though, UDN wasn't quite finished, scoring a remarkable (and telling) own goal ...

Instead of fortifying Ma's achievements, the unrealistic figure of 97 percent has contributed to his embarrassment, while also exposing the RDEC's attempt to whitewash the administration's failures. This also raises the question of whether government agencies should be putting so much effort into implementing the president's campaign promises. These promises were made to win elections and do not necessarily meet the needs of the country at the present time. 

Wait, what? Government agencies shouldn't be put to use to implement a President's election promises and policy manifesto?  Then what is the purpose of a) Government agencies, and b) election manifestos and promises?  If Tsai had won the last election I would have expected her to legally use the full range of Government institutions and instruments to enact her policies and election promises.  I may not agree with Ma but where he does actually try to fulfill his campaign promises legally and transparently I can't accuse him of tricking voters since they voted for him, in large part, on the basis of this policy platform.  

But it is the last paragraph in bold above that blows me away - the UDN is arguing that people who want to be President are expected to make any and all kinds of promises so long as it helps them get elected regardless of how feasible those promises are.  It is also saying that it is to be expected that election promises and the needs of the nation will not necessarily be aligned.

Dear UDN, you accuse President Ma of using Government agencies to make easily disproven boasts about meeting election promises and whitewashing administration failures, then you say that promises are just for elections and can be disregarded if the nation needs different policies.  Do you realise that you are only further compounding the impression many Taiwanese have that Ma lied with promises he knew he couldn't keep just to get into office? If a DPP President had won and then five years down the road simply stated that election manifestos are just election propaganda and he/she had changed her mind because the nation needed different policies, would you find that acceptable?

And this, I feel, is a major problem with Taiwanese democracy (and also US democracy - see the contrast between President Obama 2007 and Obama 2014 especially in regards to Guantanamo Bay prison).  Both Presidents Chen and Ma both made expansive promises in their election campaigns and both were ridiculed and sharply criticised for failing to make true on them.  Of the two though, Ma made himself more of a hostage to fortune if only because his 2008 campaign was characterised by hysterical and slanderous mischaracterisation of the record of the Chen Presidencies, especially the economic record. Chen's performance as symbolic head of economy was not stratospheric, as per Taiwanese longings for a repeat of the later Martial Law economy in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was far from shabby either and it encompassed the Asian Financial Crisis of 2001.  

Ma ran his 2008 campaign on the specious and disingenuous grounds that Chen had all but destroyed the Taiwanese economy and was almost immediately floored by The Great Recession which in turn destroyed his 6-3-3 promise pretty much instantly.  Although Ma couldn't have foreseen that, although there were a few high ranking economists such as the current Fed Reserve Chairwoman who did, he still made himself a hostage to fortune and fortune wasn't on his side. 馬上就會好, in the eyes of many Taiwanese, quickly turned into  馬上就會不好.

So the problem here is not that the President is wasting his time fulfilling election promises (which his legitimacy, authority and electoral mandate are actually derived from) but that he ran a campaign on promises he couldn't keep in order to distinguish himself from his predecessor and create in voters' minds a need for a change in administration.  In attacking Ma for focussing on delivering election promises UDN shows deep contempt for democracy and accountability, and above all, for Taiwanese voters, all while cleverly pretending to stand on the side of the woman in the street disillusioned with President Ma's leadership. With friends like this ...

[luisfabuloso-blog]

Seguindo aqui (acabei de fazer praticamente) se não puder seguir de volta pode ajudar a divulgar? Por favor

ok ^^

[sao-paulo-futebol-clube-blog]

6 vezes Campeã Brasileira, 3 da Libertadores e 3 do Mundial.

[rekitada]

Eu tenho orgulho de torcer pro São Paulo.

[solo-una-historia-mas]

"Campeões brasileiros são muitos, bicampeão é para poucos e tricampeão só a gente".

- Hernanes

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