With the November special municipality elections approaching, there are many questions the voters of Taipei City should be asking. One concerns the quality of leadership offered by Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌). When it comes to quality, whether quality assurance, quality control or quality management, those familiar with the topic have probably heard of Philip Crosby, author of Quality Is Free. In that book, Crosby gives his famous maxim: “Do it right the first time.”
If a person, a company, a mayor, or the mayor’s staff does something right the first time, the cost of re-doing it or making repairs is unnecessary. In other words, quality is free.
Has quality been free in Taipei? This is an important question for city residents to ask as they look back over the past decade, that includes President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) eight year tenure as mayor, followed by Hau’s four-year term.
One does not have look very far to dredge up a long list of failed projects in Taipei. Ironically, Ma raised this issue himself just recently when the Maokong Gondola was re-opened after two years of repairs. Giving his standard perfunctory speech, Ma praised Hau for the quality of the work. Say what?
Did Ma forget how he and Hau were stuck in the sweltering gondola when it broke down on its opening day? Did he not remember the washed-out foundations of the pillars supporting it? The Maokong Gondola was initiated when Ma was mayor and completed under Hau. It was not done right the first time and many people remain hesitant to ride it.
Then of course there was the MRT’s Wenhu Line, an extension of the Muzha or Brown, Line; again, it was a project begun under Ma and completed under Hau. Perhaps we should not say “completed,” but rather “rushed to near completion,” because the original Matra system unfortunately failed to communicate properly with the newly installed Bombardier system.
Good planning? Not quite. Rushed decisions? No doubt. Done right the first time? No way.
Those who regularly ride the Brown Line are well aware of its many breakdowns and delays. How costly has that been? Even now, Taipei residents are still not sure that the line has been fixed once and for all.
It would be unfair to expect Hau to shoulder all the blame for the Maokong Gondola or the Muzha Line extension. They were both begun on Ma’s watch, but that leaves Hau in a tough position. Should he place the blame for the lack of quality on his predecessor or take responsibility for it himself?
Both Ma and Hau belong to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It is not easy to admit the lack of quality is one’s own fault, but it is also problematic to blame the president.
There are many other examples of poor quality, but let us look at one that is more recent and clearly of Hau’s own making — the Dunhua South Road bicycle path. Those that live in that area well remember how both sides of the road were torn up for months to construct a lane for cyclists. It seemed like a good idea — someone got a nice fat contract to carry it out and Taipei cyclists were given a reserved and protected lane for their use. But then, well … there were complaints. It appears proper consultation procedures were not followed and that planning was incomplete. Guess what has happened to the bike lanes since.
Is quality free? Have things been done right the first time in Taipei? This is the tough reality that residents must face in upcoming election. Does anyone know the total cost, including repairs, of all the other projects initiated over the past 12 years under Ma and Hau?
Do the people of Taipei want more of the same? Quality should be free.
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
China badly misread Japan. It sought to intimidate Tokyo into silence on Taiwan. Instead, it has achieved the opposite by hardening Japanese resolve. By trying to bludgeon a major power like Japan into accepting its “red lines” — above all on Taiwan — China laid bare the raw coercive logic of compellence now driving its foreign policy toward Asian states. From the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China Seas to the Himalayan frontier, Beijing has increasingly relied on economic warfare, diplomatic intimidation and military pressure to bend neighbors to its will. Confident in its growing power, China appeared to believe
After more than three weeks since the Honduran elections took place, its National Electoral Council finally certified the new president of Honduras. During the campaign, the two leading contenders, Nasry Asfura and Salvador Nasralla, who according to the council were separated by 27,026 votes in the final tally, promised to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan if elected. Nasralla refused to accept the result and said that he would challenge all the irregularities in court. However, with formal recognition from the US and rapid acknowledgment from key regional governments, including Argentina and Panama, a reversal of the results appears institutionally and politically
Legislators of the opposition parties, consisting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), on Friday moved to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德). They accused Lai of undermining the nation’s constitutional order and democracy. For anyone who has been paying attention to the actions of the KMT and the TPP in the legislature since they gained a combined majority in February last year, pushing through constitutionally dubious legislation, defunding the Control Yuan and ensuring that the Constitutional Court is unable to operate properly, such an accusation borders the absurd. That they are basing this
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) was on Monday last week invited to give a talk to students of Soochow University, but her responses to questions raised by students and lecturers became a controversial incident and sparked public discussion over the following days. The student association of the university’s Department of Political Science, which hosted the event, on Saturday issued a statement urging people to stop “doxxing,” harassing and attacking the students who raised questions at the event, and called for rational discussion of the talk. Criticism should be directed at viewpoints, opinions or policies, not students, they said, adding
RSS