Thursday 8 August 2013

Cabinet Poker

"KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said he did not think the plagiarism disclosure that led to Yang’s resignation was a result of infighting within the ministry."
Well the use of the term "infighting" here is somewhat confusing; does it refer to squabbling over who ought to have been appointed Defense Minister, or does it refer to animosity toward the nature and extent of the reforms anticipated under Yang?

The plagiarism allegation, considering that the text in question was ghost-written to begin with, is such a strange and comparatively minor charge to bring against anyone, that it occurs to me whether Yang might have actually found it a convenient pretext. I still think the obvious conjecture as to Yang's resignation motive is likely to be correct: after the initial moves he took one look at the flop and saw he probably wasn't going to get his reforms through - whether due to insufficient support from within the Cabinet, or from within the Ministry itself, or perhaps even from the President... and therefore he folded.

The almost immediate resignation of an apparently well-qualified academic as Defense Minister certainly throws doubt upon the Ma administration's willingness to push for military reform. Perhaps Yang is merely folding a poor hand to await a better one.

2 comments:

  1. I don't know if it throws doubt on Ma's willingness to push for reforms. I think at this stage Ma has made so many conflicting statements slathered in platitudes that it's hard to know what his goals actually are. Remember this is the man who wants to make the military all voluntary despite it likely being a significantly smaller force as a result, and the man who stood by and oversaw his own party's blocking of arms purchase bills in the Legislature over sixty times (although some of those blocks might have been because the US was spiking the prices for old junk). Maybe Ma thought appointing Yang would be the best way to get this Hung Issue to go away but he's been broadsided by the legislature who passed the amendments and, as you said, made it almost impossible for Yang to find another way to 'solve' the problem. Not sure what the new guy is going to do. Probably very little.

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  2. I don't know about Ma, but...

    "...to make the military all voluntary despite it likely being a significantly smaller force as a result..."

    The ROC military is not going to compete with the PLA on size, so the value of any reduction or increase in the size of the armed forces must be judged against strategy and costs. Taiwan's defence is not predicated on having lots and lots of little men with rifles lining up on the coast, so complaining about a reduction in size per se is irrelevant. If a smaller size is a drawback, then it will very likely be worth it if it means a transition to an all-volunteer system.

    "...but he's been broadsided by the legislature who passed the amendments and, as you said, made it almost impossible for Yang to find another way to 'solve' the problem."

    No because Yang's appointment and his prior rise (remember he had already been Deputy Defense Minister) was all about more general reforms of the military, in particular the problem of how to change the strategic organization of the armed forces and the transition to an all-volunteer system. As Minister, Yang would have tried to get the Hung case out of the way quickly because it was distraction from the real work.

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