Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Ni Chung-hwa (倪重華) has become the second city official to resign this week.
Ni late on Thursday night said on Facebook that due to his “noninstitutionalized” and “antiestablishment” character, he spent much of his time in office trying to adapt to politics, but these efforts were apparently “not enough.”
Taipei City Government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) earlier that day had signed off on Ni’s resignation.
Ni tendered his resignation just two days after Ko approved the resignation of Taipei Deputy Mayor Chou Li-fang (周麗芳).
Both officials are to leave their posts at the end of this month.
Chou and Ni performed poorly in a recent survey designed by the city’s Research Development and Evaluation Commission to poll Taipei City councilors’ satisfaction with officials, with both officials ranking in the bottom three.
“I am never one to put much stock in rankings… However, being part of an institution, appraisals of all sorts seem unavoidable. Culture is so hard to quantify and therefore it is inappropriate to try to understand culture with numbers,” Ni said.
Ko yesterday sought to clarify reports that Ni was “forced out” by the city government’s top management, saying that the only person in the city government’s top management was Ko.
He denied having asked Ni to leave, saying that Ni resigned over his “life plans,” which Ko respected.
In response to questions on whether he was worried about the possibility of more officials tendering their resignations, Ko said it is only natural that some officials choose to leave.
“The bottom line is to keep boosting the city administration’s efficiency and capacity,” he said.
Ni hosted the city’s first “dawn concert” on New Year’s Day, which featured pop artists, as well as the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, as a World Design Capital event, and granted the public access to the city government’s cultural assets review committee meetings.
One of his most lauded policies was the cultivation of a world-class team of filmmakers and sound engineers via the central government-funded Taipei Pop Music Center to help promote the nation’s music around the world.
He became embroiled in controversy when news surfaced that he had apparently used his influence and treated foreign directors and film crews to stay at the Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel, and again took heat when renowned director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) criticized his alleged interference with the organization of the Taipei Film Festival, which prompted festival chairwoman Lee Lieh (李烈) to resign.
Ni, who has been dubbed by many as “the godfather of Taiwanese rock,” is a former general manager of MTV Networks Taiwan and is best known for his keen eye for discovering talented artists and helping to propel big acts such as Wu Bai (伍佰) and LA Boyz into stardom.
He is the fifth official to exit Ko’s administration since the mayor took office a year ago.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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