After the recent fanfare in the electronic media over Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
In many cases, the clear outline of the social environment in any period only emerges many years later. Similarly, a historical evaluation of politicians can only be had after many years as their good and bad sides gradually become clear. History is now beginning to re-evaluate Huang after Taipei's experience with Ma and Chen Shui-bian (
More and more Taipei residents are finding out that Huang actually might not have been such a good-for-nothing after all, even though during those days the public sympathized with the media's harsh treatment of him.
Looking back at those days, Huang's low 20 percent satisfaction rating at opinion polls might reflect public disaffection over irregularities at major projects like the construction of the mass rapid transit system and over his dreary personality. However, in a disgruntled atmosphere, people failed to appreciate Huang's courage in pulling down the Chunghua market and his work in straightening the Keelung River. In fact, Huang was even lambasted for these projects.
The unfair treatment of Huang becomes even more obvious when we compare the interaction between Taipei's various mayors and the media. Of course, the media put Chen under the microscope for any possible aberrations in his administration. But on the other hand, the situation also had a magnifying effect on anything he did to curry favor with Taipei residents.
Now in Ma's tenure, officials from his administrative team have been taking all the blame for things gone wrong, while Ma alone remains a pampered media sweetheart.
Take, for example, the endless breakdowns in the MRT system. They would have caused a major political storm during Huang's mayorship. In Ma's time, however, people's impression of the city government has pegged on "the mayor-is-good-but-his-officials-are-lousy" image. Looking at this "Ma Ying-jeou complex," perhaps Huang can only sigh in despair.
Ho Jung-hsing is chief of the city desk at the Liberty Times.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
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
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
RSS