A Taipei City Government report released on Tuesday suggested that a sole engineer with the city government’s New Construction Office was responsible for the problem with the T16 support pillar of the Maokong Gondola.
The report said the staffer, surnamed Tien (田), failed to provide sufficient information on the results of geological drilling tests before construction began, which led to stability problems for the pillar. The report links no other city government officials, such as then-Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and incumbent Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), to even the slightest of administrative negligence.
It is inconceivable that the city government thought that a report pinning the blame on a low-ranking staffer would convince the public that all accountability issues concerning the troubled NT$1 billion (US$30 million) cable car system have been resolved.
Of course, engineers involved in the project were at least partly responsible for ensuring the quality of the cable car. Ma was correct when he said in an interview that “the engineering issue [of the gondola] was a professional one and not up to me to decide.”
Blaming engineers for the gondola’s problems does not mean that those who sat in their offices signing paperwork for the project do not bear administrative responsibility.
After all, who approved building the gondola in an unstable mountainous area in the first place? Who allowed the project to be carried out without environmental impact assessments, as required by the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), by categorizing the project as construction of a “tourism and recreational” facility and not mass transportation?
Who hurried the project forward while bypassing soil and water conservation measures required by the Building Act (建築法)?
Indeed, when the Maokong Gondola started operation in July 2007, an all-smiling Ma touted it as his pride and joy, a testimony to his superior vision and good governance. Hau lauded the project as a symbol of cooperation between former and incumbent city governments.
But when problems concerning the safety of the gondola started to surface, Ma and Hau stopped patting themselves at the back and left an unfortunate staffer to shoulder responsibility for the mess.
Tien’s situation disturbingly reminds us of the unfortunate fate of Yu Wen (余文), a city government staffer who became the fall guy in Ma’s mayoral fund case.
Tien’s situation also distressingly reminds us of the fate of former director-general of highways under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications James Chen (陳晉源) — the lone official who took responsibility when rushing water caused part of the Houfeng Bridge (后豐橋) to collapse, leading to the loss of six lives in Taichung County in September.
The former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government and now the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration have both revealed different strategies for accountability.
With the DPP government, higher-ups were forced to resign to show responsibility for things that went wrong.
But when the KMT government creates a mess, a staffer at the bottom, like Yu Wen, will be expected to take the blame.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry