Taiwan’s premier says opposition’s budget cuts would cripple key government functions

TAIPEI (Reuters) : Taiwan’s premier said on Monday the government faced a crisis in day-to-day operations, including national security, because of large cuts to this year’s budget proposed by opposition parties, who have cited a need to cut waste.

Although Lai Ching-te won the presidential election last year, his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament, giving the opposition the most seats and legislative control that includes spending proposals.

The main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), together with the small Taiwan People’s Party, has proposed a record T$214.7 billion ($6.55 billion) in cuts to the budget, about 7% of the total, saying they are targeting waste.

The opposition has also proposed freezing another T$269.8 billion in spending, a number the cabinet said was 20 times higher than the past average, urging calm and rationality.

Speaking to reporters ahead of voting on the budget in parliament on Monday and Tuesday, Premier Cho Jung-tai called it an unprecedented “budget storm” that would hurt government functions from national security to health care.

“Please withdraw all proposals that would paralyse the government and impact national security,” Cho said. “It will lead to administrative departments finding it hard to operate, and even basic tasks will be hard to carry out.”

“Hostile China will be very pleased,” Cho added, pointing to cuts to security units, including the digital ministry, which tackles an average of 2.4 million cyber attacksa day, most of which Taiwan says are launched by Chinese cyber forces.

Over the weekend, the defence ministry urged the opposition to rethink a 15% cut to its overseas travel budget, which it said will deal a “very bad impact” to the military’s engagements with allies.

The opposition has proposed cutting the budgets of some departments, including the China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council, to just T$1.

On Saturday, the KMT said that the DPP was trying to protect a “fat cat budget” filled with waste and that the cuts remained in the proposal stage, accusing the ruling party of rumour mongering and trying to spread fear.

“The budget cut proposals we have seen so far are all in the state of not yet being finalised, but the DPP is so nervous that they are shouting harder than anyone else to protect the green fat cat budget,” it said, referring to the DPP’s party colour.