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.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under