Two Politicists

"In fact, we are not opposed to giving the same retirement benefits civil servants receive to KMT officials who worked under the former party-state system. Given the special background of that time, KMT employees simply did not know that their career choice was any difference from that of a civil servant. What would they do if they were now not given retirement benefits? However, the party should pay for those benefits by selling its assets. If it is still unable to cover all the expenses after doing so, then perhaps the government could cover the rest. By taking sentiment, reason and law into consideration, we believe that this is a more appropriate method for resolving the problem fairly and justly."

Well what will the rest of Taiwan's poor and elderly do without such retirement benefits - even though they have had to pay for these benefits to be given to civil servants and KMT staffers? Why should civil servants and KMT staffers be entitled to receive other people's money? I say they should be treated the same as everybody else - no special privileges just because they worked for the State or for the KMT. That being said, if the KMT wants to "look after its own" then I agree that it should do so out of its' own financial assets - but I do not agree that the government (i.e. the tax payers) should be made to cough up the rest. No way.

What strikes me most about this little editorial piece however, is that it took the combined brain-power of two academics to write this sort of dreck:

"Lastly, we must say that all disputes should be finally decided based on the consideration of building a fair and just society. The key to the problem lies in systematic reform. This is in line with the neutral definition of “democratic consolidation” proposed by Andreas Schedler, an academic studying democratization: “organizational democracy,” or, in other words, the systemization of democracy."

Not only have they found it necessary to cite another academic, but despite having done so they haven't even clearly stated what they mean by "organizational democracy" or "systemization of democracy", although I can probably guess correctly: the further application of the electoral mechanism, in substitution for simple market exchange, in order to further politicize the distribution of yet more goods and services. If that is what they mean, then professor Lee Yeau-Tarn and doctoral student Hsu Heng-Chen are doing nothing more than agitating for theft, and in doing so, marking Taiwan's proud adoption of the banner of "freedomanddemocracy" with yet more foul-smelling incongruity.