During yesterday’s massive March 93 protest with over 150,000 participants from military, civil service, police, firefighter, and labor sectors, some counter-protesters held signs outside the demonstration procession reading “Save the Next Generation.” I want to tell them: “Idiots, the problem isn’t pensions—it’s Tsai Ing-wen.”
📉 Economic Crisis Unsolved, Pensions Are Just Smoke and Mirrors
Taiwan’s current economic problem isn’t about how to slash retirees’ pensions because, compared to the nation’s fiscal budget, those pensions are merely drops in the ocean anyway. The real problem is that the Tsai Ing-wen government lacks the capacity to propose any reform plan to save Taiwan’s economy. In fact, during Ma Ying-jeou’s administration, numerous rigorously assessed reform plans with long-term advantages for Taiwanese society were put forward. But the Democratic Progressive Party deliberately sabotaged every single one of them for the sake of factional struggle. After the DPP came to power, it became impossible to adopt any of these plans—essentially shooting themselves in the foot. This made Tsai Ing-wen’s downfall merely a matter of time.
If tomorrow Premier Lin Quan suddenly announced he wanted to implement the Securities and Futures Tax that Finance Minister Liu Yi-ju proposed under Ma Ying-jeou’s administration, would you accept it? Of course not—you’d call it treason!
The Tsai government’s New Southbound Policy original vision has stalled in a state of complete bankruptcy—ever since New Southbound Office Director Huang Zhifang resigned and went to Singapore to work as a diplomat. So what comes next? Everyone is now watching to see what Tsai’s next move actually is: whether she’ll continue using Ku Li-hsiung and the sinister Illegal Party Assets Committee to crush the KMT, thereby securing an uncontested governing advantage in the next election, or… well, there doesn’t seem to be anything else.