| There are still about two years before President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) term ends. His administration is now on the verge of disintegration, for the general public are fed up with his Democratic Progress Party's (DPP) failure to govern the nation. Although Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) has vowed to adopt a conciliatory approach in dealing with the pan-blue camp, he is still stranded in a legislature dominated by the pan-blues. I believe that Antonio Chiang (江春男), former deputy secretary-general to the National Security Council, hit the nail on the head when commenting on the response of the political parties to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's victory in recent parliamentary elections there. He made the following comments: "Although the DPP speaks of reform all the time, it has only made great efforts to blame others rather than seeking to tackle the constant crises facing the nation, and believes that it is the pan-blue camp that should be held responsible for the government's failure," Chiang said. "The government is so unfocused that is simply unable to push ahead with the reform," he said. "It is the opposition party that Chen is attempting to reform." "To seek victory in elections, Chen pledges to do things he cannot achieve. He forgets his promises as soon as he has uttered them," Chang said. On the occasion of celebrating the DDP's 19th birthday, Chen made three wishes for the party: He wished Taiwan could become a normal, beautiful and a great country; he wished the DPP could secure more than half of the cities or counties in the year-end mayoral and county commissioner elections; and he also wished the DPP could sustain a determination to reform. Regrettably, Chen's three wishes seem rather pathetic and dreamlike, for he is simply incapable of managing the country and the government is completely morally bankrupt. Chen has completed two-thirds of his term in office, but he has not become more competent as a national leader. To make matters worse, all sorts of government malpractice and abuse of privilege continue to be exposed by the media. Reform has been a catch phrase Chen loves to trumpet ever since he began campaigning for re-election during last year's presidential campaign. But now, this ideal has become just one of his wishes. Apart from his incapacity to pursue reform, Chen also has difficulty managing the nation. On top of all these greater and smaller crises, the media has exposed a number of instances of abuse of privilege among Chen's family members. There have been so many cases that the first family hardly has a leg to stand on. It is perplexing that Chen has been incapable of anticipating these situations and avoiding them. According to the statistics provided by the academics participating in a seminar held by the China Times Cultural and Educational Foundation, since 1998, 400 people with annual incomes of over NT$8 million have yet to pay any taxes. Prior to 2000, the number of such high-income people failing to pay taxes was under 10, and in 1999, the figure was only five. We want to examine why this kind of incomprehensible and outrageous situation could have happened since the DPP came to power. If Chen and his administration are unable to improve the current situation, it will be difficult for them to even retain the current seats in the year-end local government elections. In that case, Chen's three wishes will turn out to be nothing more than pipe dreams. Chiu Hei-yuan is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica. TRANSLATED BY DANIEL CHENG | 