Over the past few days, volunteers and Netizens across the nation have turned their compassion into action, serving as rescue workers and searching for typhoon victims and transporting relief aid, or donating money and disseminating rescue and missing persons information via e-mail, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook and other social networking Web sites.
Yet the broadcast and print media continue to be filled with heartrending images of frightened survivors recounting narrow escapes, tearful villages wailing for their missing or dead loved ones and horrifying scenes of villages annihilated by water, rocks and mudslides.
There is only so much that individuals and charity groups can do when a disaster of this magnitude strikes. The most effective resources lie in the hands of the central government, which is the sole organization with the authority to integrate and mobilize rescue operations.
The government so far has rejected offers of material assistance from Japan and the US, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that Taiwan has “sufficient resources” and that “the disaster relief mechanism is working well.”
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has ruled out declaring an emergency decree, stating — perhaps not unreasonably — that existing legislation provides the executive with all the authority and resources that are necessary and that government mechanisms are functioning properly.
Arguments over the reach of the law and the utility of a presidential emergency decree will continue for some time, but for the moment, it is dumbfounding to recall that the president, speaking at the Central Emergency Operation Center on Saturday, shifted responsibility to local governments. He said it was those governments that should act as prime movers in rescue work and that the central government would act as an auxiliary. Given that local governments enjoy no authority to deploy military resources, Ma’s little lecture was as nonsensical as his verbaling of the Central Weather Bureau for failing to predict the enormity of the disaster.
Cabinet Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) on Sunday said the scope and speed of the central government’s rescue work had exceeded that of the 921 Earthquake almost 10 years ago.
But a cursory comparison suggests this is not the case. Hours after the quake struck on Sept. 21, 1999, the Hengshan Military Command Center ordered the deployment of forces to disaster zones and commenced rescue work. Within a day, more than 15,000 personnel were stationed in quake-ravaged regions and advanced helicopters such as the OH-58D, which carries laser range finders and thermal imaging sensors, were deployed for rescue operations.
How ironic it is that a large number of the nation’s military bases are in southern Taiwan, yet three days after Typhoon Morakot slammed into the area on Friday, the military had deployed a mere 8,500 personnel to stricken areas, and without provision for advanced aircraft.
When disaster strikes, every hour counts. The earlier manpower is dispatched on search and rescue efforts, the more lives can be saved. At a time of disaster, leadership must come to the fore to minimize suffering and financial loss.
Clearly, this has not happened, and this failure will emerge as a profound test of the Ma administration’s credibility.
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
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A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
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