TAIPEI, Taiwan -- No recent social issue has better demonstrated the fracturing potential of Taiwan's economic woes, its looming demographic crisis and its generational divide than that of pension reform.
▲圖／翻攝自中國郵報
Since the Democratic Progressive Party swept into power last May, President Tsai Ing-wen has made reforming Taiwan's archaic pension system a government priority.
Faced with impending bankruptcy, the issue of propping up the convoluted funds has been framed across party lines as a ticking time bomb.
Politicians in the past balked at diffusing the crisis, aware their policy choices could very well blow up in their face.
In January, the Alliance for Monitoring Pension Reforms, made up of retired and working public servants as well as teachers and military veterans, staged a massive rally as social groups and government representatives concluded a pension reform conference seeking to draw consensus on key points, including lowering the income replacement ratio and phasing out the controversial 18 percent preferential savings rate.
But flying under the media's radar has been a younger generation of civil servants, who not only want pension reforms to proceed, but also changes to the very definition of public service itself.
One such group has been the Taiwan Civil Service Innovation Coalition (TCSIC, 公務革新力
量聯盟).
Just before the new government took power, Lin Yu-kai (林于凱), a young civil servant who had served for five years, drafted an open letter to then-Premier-designate Lin Chuan.
Lin called on the new government to not only tackle pension reform but change the culture of the public bureaucracy.
For him, it was a culture that was making the system unaccountable to the public, inefficient, unresponsive to social needs and at the mercy of political appointees. This desire by younger members of the civil service to reform from within gave way to the formation of the TCSIC.
The Elephant in the Room
"Traditionally, the only thing demanded of civil servants was that they follow orders. But we think that new modes of politics should be more bottom up in order to benefit the system as a whole. The TCSIC provides civil servants the space for policy discussions, skills training and a channel for voicing their opinions," Lin told The China Post.
The group say they want to make policymaking more transparent and streamlined, moving away from bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake.
Members of the TCSIC have powered their message of questioning business as usual in the public sector through social media.
One video clip published on Facebook outlines the convoluted and closed-off process of policymaking.
In the video, the inefficiencies of the public policy process are assessed from day one, when isolated groups formulate policy based on their own internal discussions. By the time the policy has been finalized and outsiders, including the media, find out about its deficiencies, the group is forced to push through an alternative that is still unconvincing. The short clip ends by asking: "Everybody sees the problem with this: what can be done to save the government?"
But Lin and like-minded members of the bureaucracy face an uphill task in mobilizing support among both colleagues and the public.
Whereas older civil servants and retirees rally easily to the call of resisting cuts to their benefits, for many young people, the pension issue seems like a distant problem full of obtrusive technical terms and legalese.
Chou Hsin (周鑫), a civil servant in Chiayi City, said he only jumped on the issue when he saw the government's own actuary reports predicting that the whole public sector pension system would be bankrupt in 2031.
"I'm 32 now and will be 45 or 46 when the pension funds are predicted to run dry. Right now, NT$3,000 is being deducted from my salary every month to pay into the pension fund. Unless something changes I basically won't be seeing any of the money I'm putting in right now," he said during a telephone interview.
Galvanized by Lin's open letter to the Tsai administration, Chou later became the organizations' spokesman for government-held discussion panels on pension reform.
Finding Middle Ground
The challenge for those advocating reform has been building a consensus among civil servants
"For me, it's understandable that older colleagues who are about to retire want to take a position of resisting the government's reforms," Chou said.
And even among groups supporting reform positions were diverse. Chou emphasized repeatedly during our conversation that TCSIC could not possibly represent all of its members.
A main area of contention has been the pace of which reforms are to take place. For example, Lin fears that the gradual pace proposed by the government may not translate into a sustainable system, describing it as a temporary solution at best.
"Other young civil servants wanted a more radical approach: a clear division along generational lines to pursue reform objectives. But our viewpoint is different: a country's pension system is built on generations paying into it to support the next — so when we hear these opinions we have to take them into account and make adjustments accordingly," he said.
Chou, whose own family includes retired civil servants was initially asked why he wanted to involve himself in the issue.
"While they can't agree completely with our position, when I explain our predicament of high contribution rates, delayed retirement age and the looming threat of bankruptcy, they can start to at least sympathize with our dilemma." Chou added that he was surprised when older superiors showed support and encouragement for the group's mission to institute changes from within.
For Lin, however, that process has been fraught with incidents of personal attacks.
He said that following a recording of a televised debate on a political commentary show, Lee Lai-hsi (李來希), a prominent critic of pension reform, called him an idiot (Lin said he responded by calling Lee "very smart for having manipulated public opinion").
In TCSIC's first press conference in January, many members wore surgical masks out of fear of being identified and targeted at work.
He said he found it surprising how the "relatively well-educated civil servant cohort does not have the good judgment to stand up to fake news or rumors."
"There are deliberate moves by some to frame this as a 'political stocktaking against civil servants' in order to frame this as an ideological issue involving the pan green and pan blues. This has transformed an issue about systemic problems into a war of words."
Lin said in an op-ed last month he was being monitored and vetted by an internal agency due to his participation in TCSIC.
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