To see the premier of a country getting involved in the maintenance of public toilets is a rare phenomenon. However, when it was reported that one of the toilets in the men’s public restroom at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall had been out of order for six months, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) immediately called Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) and demanded that the matter be promptly attended to. This action has been the subject of widely different interpretations.
Some have said that a premier who gets involved in the management of toilets instead of attending to national issues is way out of line. Others have been of the opinion that everything should be done well, regardless of its scope, and that it is a good thing for the premier to care about what the public thinks, seeing to it that the matter was handled promptly.
A broken toilet really is a small matter, and it is quite astonishing that it would require the call of a busy premier to get it fixed. The careless attitude of civil servants is having a serious effect on government efficiency — the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is one of Taiwan’s main tourist attractions, and it is a disgrace to the whole nation that it would take six months to fix one of its public toilets.
In the past, Jiang headed the Cabinet’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, so he is well aware that planning, execution and evaluation are necessary aspects of effective and efficient administration. The government’s poor performance record is intimately related to the fact that these issues are not managed and controlled well.
Government officials excel at writing reports, and every policy report is eloquent and voluminous, stating that the economic growth rate is high, the unemployment rate is low, and price increases are being kept at a minimum. However, the reality is very different. The economic growth rate is repeatedly adjusted downward, economic development plans are repeatedly changed, construction projects are delayed and budgets are increased.
Officials ignore the fact that their plans never meet their targets and civil servants’ performance evaluations, salaries and year-end bonuses remain unchanged. When Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) had his bonus withheld for his continuous adjustments to the economic growth rate, he said that he did not care. This devil-may-care attitude among civil servants is frightening.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said he is working hard to improve the economy, but years have gone by without any improvement. Instead, the average salary has dropped to the level it was 16 years ago, and the public regards Ma’s “6-3-3” economic campaign pledge from 2008 to be a bad joke when civil servants are incapable of improving the situation. Seeing the government unravel, it is not surprising that its approval ratings are plumbing new depths. For a long time, flagging government efficiency has been the main stumbling block for Taiwanese competitiveness. Although Taiwanese industry is both effective and flexible, it is not much use when it locks horns with snail-paced government bureaucracy.
The premier should not be concerned with broken toilets, but he definitely should be concerned with the work of civil servants. The Cabinet should take the lead in improving government efficiency by dealing with the toilet issue. Jiang told civil servants loud and clear that if they cannot do their job and execute their plans and programs effectively, they will be taken to task, criticized and punished.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US