President Ma Ying-jeou has all but served his first four-year term, during
which his administration earned a reputation for incompetence. That it
maintained peaceful relations across the Taiwan Strait
allowed Ma to secure a second term. Now the public is getting to see his true
colors and they are not liking what they see.
The gasoline and electricity
price hikes initiated by the government are leading to increases in the prices
of consumer goods and consumers are, not unreasonably, concerned that
everything is going up except their wages. As the public suffers, so does Ma’s
popularity rating, now down to 18.7 percent, with the Cabinet’s standing at 15
percent. Ma has already won his second term, but according to a recent poll, 13
percent of those who voted for him are regretting it, wishing they had voted
for former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai
Ing-wen instead. This should be a wake-up call for Ma and his government. For
support ratings to tumble this low for any leader or Cabinet in a democratic
society is approaching the limit of acceptability.
Ma’s response is that things being difficult now means things will be
better in the future. In that, he is wrong. The price increases we are seeing
now are the result of the government’s intentional concealment of inflationary
pressures in the past. Also, if prices are rising, there is nothing to say they
will not continue to do so, nor can one say that difficult times now are paving
the way for better times ahead. The government would have us think the price
hikes reflect the policy of the previous government of keeping prices suppressed,
or tell us that the DPP government had also increased prices. These are all
excuses delivered by an incompetent administration to conceal its own
inadequacies. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been in power for four
years and for it to blame any policy mistakes on the previous administration is
disingenuous. The public has entrusted the KMT with the reins of government and
part of the responsibility of a government is to revise unsuitable or flawed
policies. The previous administration paid for its mistakes by losing political
power.
The pain being felt by the public is, to some extent, due to international
factors such as the rising prices of raw materials, but the problem is
predominantly caused by government incompetence. Fuel prices rose 10 percent in
one go, the impact of which was felt both psychologically and also in the
knock-on effect on commodity prices. At the same time, the government announced
it would increase electricity rates, which added fuel to the fire. The price
hikes resulting from this double increase have been exponential.
The prices of vegetable oils, night market snacks, rice, bread and cakes
have all gone up. Electricity bills are not set to increase until the middle of
next month, but already manufacturers are saying they are unable to absorb the
corresponding rise in their costs and will have to pass these on to the
consumer. In the past, manufacturers had to think carefully before raising
their prices, but now that the government has set the ball rolling, it has
given these manufacturers a reason and excuse to follow suit.
In the past, the government would have monitored the prices of essential
goods and restricted any move to increase them if there were an increase in
fuel prices or public utility bills. Surely, the government should have known
that by allowing considerable increases in fuel prices, it would affect
commodity prices. Instead, it allowed the hikes without first implementing
price-stabilizing measures. The government agencies responsible for price
stability have been caught dozing and they have not done a thing.
Given the resultant inflationary pressure, the government really should
have taken a more intelligent, skillful, hands-on approach, rather than the
clumsy, myopic, uncoordinated response it has shown. Ma should not think
winning a second term means the pressure is off. The very least he could do is
stand up and account for what is going on.
