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.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they