KMT Paralyzes the Beautiful Island

The KMT's fear of a well-governed Taiwan, and indifference to the urgent needs of the island, reached a new milestone today is the Blues slashed government budgets in an attempt to make the DPP look bad and paralyze governance on the island. They also voted down the arms procurement again:

The opposition-dominated legislature yesterday voted down the NT$10.9 billion (US$338 million) budget earmarked for Patriot missile batteries and a NT$272.62 million outlay preparing for the purchase of items remaining in the special arms procurement package.

The KMT simply doesn't care about Taiwan.

A retirement pension program for civil servants was postponed until the next session. Two-thirds of the Examination Yuan's budget was therefore frozen because of the crucial nature of the proposed reform, as well as the entire budget of the Ministry of Civil Service.

Two-thirds of the Executive Yuan's budget was frozen, with opposition legislators demanding that the government begin building the Suao-Hualien freeway before the budget would be released.

In one example of legislation that was cleared, the construction of the Hushan Reservoir (湖山水庫) in Yunlin County will proceed despite environmentalists' protests.

Note how the reservoir project will be built, as that involves the flow of funds to the network of construction and cement companies that support KMT rule. Note also that the budget item that the legislators want is a pork project for the east coast, a place long a KMT fief.

The legislature also voted to kill several DPP projects, including the much-needed constitutional reform office:

The legislature also voted in favor of a People First Party (PFP) proposal that the Presidential Office dissolve its constitutional reform office, human rights commission and four other agencies.

In recent months the legislature has been attempting to destroy the Presidency -- something DPP members, by blaming Chen for their own problems, have been exacerbating -- and a special target was mainland affairs. The legislature originally planned to eliminate that office and appoint itself the executor of the island's China policy, but that plan fell through as it would not pass constitutional muster. Still, if the Blues can't have control, they will simply destroy:

The budget of the Mainland Affairs Council was cut by NT$100 million, and NT$280,000 meant for Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Pasuya Yao's (姚文智) salary was trimmed.

In sum...

The legislature also slashed NT$40.2 billion from the second financial reform plan and voted in favor of conditionally lifting the ban on US beef imports.

Altogether, the legislature yesterday slashed NT$36.5 billion from the government budget and froze NT$246 billion. The cut is the largest in a decade.

Here is an easy-to-understand problem with a clear target for the DPP to get across to the public: don't have the services you need? Blame the Blues. Will the DPP be able to exploit this scorched earth Blue approach to Taiwan? At the moment, I doubt it.

UPDATE: the Cabinet is mulling a veto:

In the face of the pan-blue-controlled Legislature's largest cut over the past decade to proposed central government budgets, the Cabinet said last night that it would file a veto motion in response to some of the Legislature's decisions and asked that lawmakers reconsider their decisions.

"The Executive Yuan deeply regrets the result" of lawmakers' review of the budget, the Cabinet said in a press statement released last night. It contended that many of the legislative resolutions would jeopardize national security, hamper economic development and impair the administrative arm's exercise of power. Therefore, the Executive Yuan would request that lawmakers reconsider the resolutions, the statement said.

.....

Pan-blue legislators launched the resolution in support of the view that any proposed change to the pension program must first be approved by lawmakers, though over the past three decades when the Kuomintang was in power such changes were made by administrative decree.

Just more of the usual KMT hypocrisy of opposing things it supported without question during its own time in power.

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT]