Dr. Lai’s AI Cabinet
All the President-elects’ men (and a few women) joined him yesterday at an “action camp” to garner public support. Let’s take a peek at who’s who in Taiwan’s incoming government.
President-elect Lai Ching-te gathered his cabinet for a public pep-talk he called an “action camp” yesterday. His inauguration is on May 20th, just a little more than two weeks away. For his team, he has taken heavily from the civil sphere. More than 50% are not members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In addition, more than 80% will be new to their posts, meaning they were either outside of the government before or shifted over from another post.
Lai made sure to thank his cabinet members for taking on their collective responsibilities, especially as many of them are leaving their cushy existing positions in industry to brave the “trifurcated” legislature. The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) holds the plurality and have so far teamed up with the 8 legislators of the upstart Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) quite well. Lai’s life won’t be quite as easy as his predecessor, Taiwan’s outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen. Tsai enjoyed a legislative majority that Lai won’t have, and she’s also left him with a few domestic “time bomb” issues such as energy security and labor pension solvency that he’ll have to face pretty much right away. All this is in addition to cross-strait tensions.
But for now, let’s take a look at Lai’s posse: I’m not going to go through all of them. Just the ones I have hot takes about:
Minister of Economic Affairs JW Guo (郭智輝): Guo will be leaving his post as the chairman of Topco, a TSMC supply-chain company. Guo is emblematic of the kind of talent (non-partisan, proven business bona fides) Lai is trying to pack his team with. This can be a double-edged sword.
On the plus side, obviously it speaks to Lai’s ambition to align Taiwan’s future towards growth and innovation. But just because somebody is really awesome at business doesn’t mean they’ll know how to get things done in government, especially in the highly adversarial arena of getting questioned in the legislature.
As someone with an energy focus, I am wishing and hoping very hard that Guo, since he worked as a top executive in the semiconductor industry, will take the issue of energy security seriously at last.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍): Apparently it’s time for us to get brushed up on the murky topic of DPP factions again. Lai Ching-te belongs to the “New Tide” (新潮流) faction (although he formally resigned from the faction, everybody assures me he’s still “New Tide.”) People who are close to President Tsai are called the Ing-faction (英系) even though she herself is adamant about being above factionalism and frequently says “there is no Ing-faction.” Then there’s the “TNCPA” (正國會) faction. TNCPA stands for “Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association.” Lin Chia-lung leads the TNCPA faction and apparently that’s how the former Mayor of Taichung and Minister of Transportation and Communications ended up becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs? Hmm.
There are other factions but I’ve been told they’re relatively minor. New Tide, Ing-faction and the TNCPA are the ones to remember. Oh and I think there’s another one called the “Su-faction.”
Minister of National Defense, Wellington Koo (顧立雄): Koo is a trusted Tsai-administration stalwart and it’s notable that on defense Lai has selected a civilian, not a career soldier. It’s been explained to me that a civilian as Defense Minister could bring the kind of shakeup that’s needed in the military. Specifically, Taiwan’s military is commonly considered too ossified with inflexible and counterproductive separation between the three branches of the military.
Having said that I still think it’s kind of puzzling how these politicos get shuffled around between very different portfolios without a lot of relevant experience. Koo is of course very experienced as a lawyer. But he was airdropped in as Chairman of the FSC without previous experience in the financial sector. Now he’s the Minister of National Defense (after a 4-year stint as the Secretary General of the National Security Council.)
It could be that he would prove to be very capable. But it seems obvious that his top quality relates not to finance or defense but the fact that he had President Tsai’s trust…and now President Lai’s.
Vice Premier, Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君): Look, Cheng was apparently a very nice and hard-working lady during her stint as Minister of Culture previously. However, I will always remember her as the crazy anti-nuclear person back in 2013 when she was a DPP legislator. She held a press conference where she accused Taipower of “hiding electricity from the people of Taiwan” and “cooking the books to make it appear that we will have a power crunch without the 4th Nuclear Power Plant.” Well, well, well. Fast forward to 2024. Just about all sane observers agree that Taiwan is INDEED in a power crunch. I guess being dead wrong doesn’t mean you can’t get ahead in life.
Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲): Lai got rid of so many people or shifted their posts around that it’s kind of amazing that Kuan Bi-ling got to keep her post as the Minister of the Ocean Affairs Council. Remember when two Chinese fishermen drowned after being pursued by the Taiwanese coast guard? The Taiwanese response in that incident was not stellar and she personally said and did some things that just felt out of pocket to me. In a FB post after the incident she apparently described herself as a white lily amongst the flames of war:
“Amongst the flames of war that fill the sky, a white lily flower in full bloom, spinning lightly, floating downwards slowly, using the gentle fragrance of the lily, to comfort the dead, the family and the coast guard.”
Whatever she was referring to, the post was just bizarre. A reporter then asked her about the Chinese side calling her response to the fishermen’s death as “cold-blooded.” In response she literally touched her hand to his cheek and said “feel the warmth of my body.” 😬
Anyhow. We will be seeing those people and the rest of the AI (short for Active and Innovative) cabinet soon enough. Cabinets are like pancakes…the first one sometimes don’t come out just right and need to be reshuffled in time for the local elections. If that is the case it would be nice to see more women in key posts and also more young blood.
What’s very encouraging is Lai’s frequent statements that he is looking to work with the opposition parties. It won’t be easy, but it’s what democracy is all about and he also won’t have a choice if he wants to get things done.