For a government agency that has to deal with numerous threats, such as losing the nation’s handful of diplomatic allies and periodic incidents of Taiwanese delegations being expelled from international events, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has found itself in even deeper trouble after mistakingly using a photograph of Washington Dulles International Airport in its new biometric passport design.
It took the ministry’s Bureau of Consular Affairs almost three years to design and prepare for the launch of the new version of the passport on Monday. Its primary aim was to enhance its anticounterfeit features, given that the last time it was updated was in 2008.
Unfortunately, all it took for something celebratory to go miserably wrong was one careless mistake by a designer — who selected a misidentified photo online and used it as the basis for her draft sketch — followed by oversight by a number of ministry officials who failed to double-check and spot the mistake.
The consequence is that the NT$80 million (US$2.68 million) spent printing 200,000 new passports has gone to waste, with more money needed to redesign and reprint them.
What is more serious than the monetary loss is that the incident has undermined Taiwan’s international credibility. The reason why Taiwanese passport holders are able to enjoy visa-free or landing visa treatment in more than 160 countries, including the US and EU territories, is because of the nation’s stringent passport production and issuance process.
How much trust will the international community place in the Republic of China (ROC) passport, knowing that not one person responsible for overseeing the new passport’s design and production was able to distinguish between a US airport and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport?
However, what is done cannot be undone. What is needed is a careful look at the organizational structure of the bureau to avoid a recurrence of similar incidents, rather than simply letting a few heads roll as a show of the foreign ministry’s collective remorse — which is exactly what it is doing now.
On Wednesday, both the bureau’s incumbent leader, Agnes Chen (陳華玉), and her predecessor, Representative to Canada Kung Chung-chen (龔中誠), were demoted over the passport mishap.
Chen has accepted the punishment with grace. On the other hand, Kung, who left the bureau in September last year after heading it since 2013, refused to take the demotion lying down, saying that Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) was the one who signed off on the passport’s final design.
The problem with Taiwan’s deep-seated political culture of axing one or more high-ranking officials to solve a crisis is that it is not only ineffective, but it could also deal a crippling blow to the government’s morale.
Neither Chen, Kung nor Lee single-handedly made the mistake. That mistake should fall on the shoulders of each and every person who had their hands on the project over the past three years.
Firing them all solves nothing, because their positions would simply be filled by someone who is also used to doing things the same way that got everyone into this mess in the first place.
The foreign ministry should stop pointing fingers in a desperate attempt to alleviate public fury. It should instead carefully and extensively examine what kinds of organizational flaws could have resulted in this incident.
The devil almost always hides in the details.
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
Since leaving office last year, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been journeying across continents. Her ability to connect with international audiences and foster goodwill toward her country continues to enhance understanding of Taiwan. It is possible because she can now walk through doors in Europe that are closed to President William Lai (賴清德). Tsai last week gave a speech at the Berlin Freedom Conference, where, standing in front of civil society leaders, human rights advocates and political and business figures, she highlighted Taiwan’s indispensable global role and shared its experience as a model for democratic resilience against cognitive warfare and
The diplomatic spat between China and Japan over comments Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made on Nov. 7 continues to worsen. Beijing is angry about Takaichi’s remarks that military force used against Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” necessitating the involvement of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Rather than trying to reduce tensions, Beijing is looking to leverage the situation to its advantage in action and rhetoric. On Saturday last week, four armed China Coast Guard vessels sailed around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known to Japan as the Senkakus. On Friday, in what
RSS