TAIPEI – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said Saturday that her government should not be measured by its performance in the first 100 days of its mandate, as she marked the beginning of her fourth month in office, the Central News Agency reported.
“I don’t want to see others pass judgment on my governance based on the first 100 days,” said Tsai, who took office on May 20. “By the same token, I won’t pass judgment on Cabinet members based only on the first 100 days of their tenures.”
Tsai was presenting her policy aims at a gathering with local and foreign media at the Taipei Guest House.
She said that reform takes time and that she would not back off when faced with difficulties or a lack of progress in the short term.
Tsai said her government would not shy away from admitting and correcting mistakes, and would not be afraid to make bold steps when it thinks it is doing the right thing.
The president said that over the past three months her policy plans could be divided into four major goals: to solve social problems that have long plagued Taiwan, to push for various kinds of reform, to build a new economic model for the island and to maintain regional peace and communication with other countries.
She said that her government had succeeded in introducing a law to handle political parties’ “ill-gotten assets.”
Tsai said she will personally head a presidential committee to arrange a national affairs meeting to discuss judicial reform, which the president described as the biggest concern for Taiwan.
One of the biggest challenges for the Tsai administration is to work out a pension reform for the financially strapped island with a population that is ageing quickly.
Such a reform would likely see cuts in payments to a large number of civil servants whose pensions are generally much higher than those of laborers, and the Tsai government has already seen conflicts arise between the two groups.
Changes to the national annuity scheme must not be biased against any occupation, Tsai said at the gathering with the media. Neither should changes harm the interests of the underprivileged, she said.
She said that there should not be payment cuts for those whose pensions are already below average, such as military servicemen who retired years ago on a low-pension scheme.
But she said any reform push must also understand the complaints of those who enjoy “excessive” pensions.
“The annuity reform is not meant to encourage a group of people to fight another group of people,” the president said. “It is not a call on a class to stand up against another class.”
She said the goal of the annuity reform is to create a sustainable pension system to protect the livelihood of retirees.
