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Ma should concentrate on his responsibilities

I recently saw a poster on the side of a Taipei bus that showed Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wearing a hard hat, the type workers wear on construction sites. The poster reads: "Little brother Ma's advice: be a bit more careful and the mountains won't come tumbling down." Below, there's a big slogan: "Watch me for five minutes and your home will be safer for it." I watched Ma for five minutes, but still couldn't understand how that would make my home any safer. Finally, a line near the bottom explained the riddle. It's actually a call for the citizens of Taipei to maintain revetments and dikes to prevent landslides.

This poster tries to use "little brother Ma's" charm to disseminate a message, but the message itself is not clear. Instead, it's a play on words from city officials hoping that the city's population will look more kindly on Ma. Looking at Ma more often will make your home safer. Even though I cannot understand this logic, city officials are obviously fulfilling their duties in marketing Ma incessantly, without even considering whether the message in the ad is logical or if the policy concept contains an ideal.

That the "international metropolis" of Taipei should ask its citizens to maintain damaged revetments themselves to protect their own lives demonstrates a policy in which the government neglects its responsibilities. Many landslides in Taipei are the result of the city government approving illegal mountainside developments and then not properly inspecting the construction sites. Why else would citizens buy dangerous housing or live in areas where they worry daily about landslides? Isn't all this the result of improper development? Why doesn't Ma review the workings of his government to prevent these violations? Instead, he wants people to protect themselves by "caring for the land and caring for the city." Such inverted logic and policies are, in fact, not at all rare. They follow the pattern of 50 years of KMT rule, where policies were "privatized" as far as possible to decrease the responsibility that should be shouldered by the government.

The past "Three generations in one house" policy, for example, was an attempt to "privatize" the responsibility for childcare and care for the elderly as far as possible, since the government wouldn't then need to implement social welfare and security policies. Nicely put, it allowed three generations to enjoy a happy family life. Put more bluntly, it meant that "this is your own business, the government doesn't care." After seeing "little brother Ma's" landslide poster, therefore, my thoughts were in a mess. Why, then, do we elect a city mayor? If every citizen is supposed to prevent landslides and flooding, then what is the point of paying taxes that go to the city government? The mayor should spend more time considering how to solve the problems of improper mountainside development and flooding and less time asking residents to do his government's work for it. He should also stop thinking about increasing his city's funding in political terms, lest he forget that the point of getting more money is not to make a more beautiful poster.

Hsu Chia-ching is the secretary-general of the Taiwan Women's League.

Translated by Perry Svensson
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