The nation’s biggest headline-grabber over the past few days has been the head-to-head confrontation between Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Hon Hai Group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) over the controversy involving the Syntrend Creative Park project in the capital.
Amid accusations by media pundits that there might have been corruption involved in the bidding procedure for an underground parking lot won by a Hon Hai subsidiary, Gou spent more than NT$3 million (US$95,100) on newspaper advertisements on Monday demanding that the city government make public all documents related to the bid within 48 hours or it would cease construction on the site.
Ko responded by saying that the city government “is not a subsidiary of Hon Hai” and that it will “not buy into threats” from anyone.
Putting the controversy over the project aside for the moment, Gou’s sheer presumptuousness is beyond belief.
A successful entrepreneur, Gou has long been known for his brisk and fierce personality. He has on numerous occasions threatened to leave Taiwan because of dissatisfaction with the nation’s economic policies. However, the extent to which he felt he could simply “communicate” with the government by spending NT$3 million on an advertisement to demand things go his way is dumbfounding.
The incident has left many wondering about the relationship between big business and local governments. Is the way Gou conducts himself and issues threats a result of being spoiled by the administration of former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and the central government, or because such tactics have worked for him in the past?
Many more might question the relationship between the rich and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government, following media reports of how Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) was “summoned” by food-scandal-plagued Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) for a meeting at the group’s headquarters at Taipei 101 over the issue of cross-strait agricultural trade; or Gou’s threat in June last year to stop paying taxes and move Hon Hai’s headquarters out of Taiwan if he did not get an explanation from the National Communications Commission as to why a subsidiary could not use 4G telecommunications equipment manufactured by China-based Huawei Technologies Co.
Hau, meanwhile, has described the many criticisms that Ko has directed at several projects that he initiated as “unbearable.” Hau said he has reached the limit of his patience and accused the new mayor of cherry-picking information to repeatedly discredit the previous administration.
The question is who is the one responsible for the public’s bad perceptions of the capital’s many development projects — such as the Taipei Dome, the Taipei Twin Towers project, the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and the MeHAS City project.
As such, “unbearable” ought be the word that Taipei residents use in the face of low administrative efficiency, efficacy and lack of transparent information on government affairs.
In the past, due to a lack of information transparency, many Taipei residents have been kept in the dark on various city projects, whose terms and contracts might have been unreasonably and unfairly drafted.
Less than a month into his term, Ko has already rubbed several conglomerates the wrong way, including Hon Hai, Farglory Land Development Co and Fubon Land Development Co. As Ko locks horns with Gou and other big-name tycoons, he needs to know that he has the backing of the public in the battle for justice.
After all, any political party interacting too closely with big corporations brings the likelihood of corruption, and, Ko, being an independent, might for once be a politician unhindered by baggage, and capable of tackling the issues and looking after the public’s interests.
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
RSS