Politicians, bureaucrats and technocrats

That worse-case scenario is being played out in Taiwan, as it's government is doing what it can to cope with the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot. The bungling government under President Ma Ying-jeou and his Premier Liu Chao-shiuan has yet to ensure that all the mud and debris have been cleaned up, while pockets of flood victims have remained stranded since the devastating storm hit Taiwan on August 8. A grand reconstruction program is being drawn up to rebuild all ruined or abandoned villages or resettle the villagers with little regard for how future flood disasters can be prevented or mitigated.

Neither of the two leaders are bad politicians, though. Ma is a bureaucrat turned politician, while his head of government is a dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat with an impeccable academic qualification. Bureaucrats who work under them are either mediocre or even below mediocrity, albeit most of them have advanced degrees, almost all of them from U.S. universities. But the best they can is just to hold on to their ever-lengthening red tape just like President Ma. There are few qualified technocrats. As a matter of fact, most of the technocrats simply rubberstamp whatever development plans are recommended by mostly self-interest-seeking scholars or incompetent experts.

We didn't expect this poor triumvirate of ours to do a good job in the past couple of weeks. Nor do we have high hopes for a successful post-disaster reconstruction. But we are concerned a politician-to-be is planning another march of “Redshirts” to demand Ma be impeached or step down as president.

Chuang Yen, a deputy convener in chief of the 2006 Redshirts campaign, announced the other day he is calling up his remnants to take to the streets on September 9. Shih Ming-teh, a former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party and a revolutionary, led a quarter of a million supporters wearing red shirts to besiege the Office of the President on October 10 three years ago in an attempt to force Chen Shui-bian to resign as president to take responsibility for a spate of scandals involving himself, his family and his close aides. The Redshirts movement didn't topple President Chen, who, however, is now standing trial for forgery, corruption, graft and money laundering.

President Chen wasn't such a good politician. The hostile press describes last year's change of government as “sending off one who conspired to rake in money” and “welcoming aboard the other who is unwittingly committing manslaughter.”

The revolutionary hasn't come out to declare he would lead the campaign that his politician-to-be deputy is planning to oust President Ma. We are not worried if he does, for any such movement, which they called a display of “people's power,” is doomed to fail. We are only afraid that Ma under fire would overreact.

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