When it comes to the implementation of policies, efficiency is usually a favorable attribute. However, if a governing body wants to win the applause of its subjects, then the policies themselves must be in their best interests — otherwise an overemphasis on efficiency only ends up destroying their trust.
This is exactly the conundrum Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is facing.
Ko has attracted a lot of controversy over the past couple of weeks: There was the brouhaha over the residents’ vote concerning the future of Shezidao peninsula (社子島) — which was conducted online using a platform called “i-Voting,” his decision to push through a decision to install sensors for the eTag toll system at Taipei’s 52,000 public parking spaces and the Taipei City Government’s agreement with Taiwan Railways Administration to discard an iconic Taipei Railway Station sign.
The Shezidao vote, which took place late last month, saw a turnout of just 35 percent of all registered voters, of whom about 60 percent backed the “Ecological Shezidao” proposal for the development of the flood-detention area.
The plan garnered 3,032 votes from about 14,000 eligible voters in Shezidao — or only 21 percent.
Prior to the vote, some residents expressed dissatisfaction with the conditions of the proposals, saying that the floor space index the government set on new buildings was too low and that requirements needed to purchase interim housing were too strict.
The low voter turnout indicates that residents were disappointed with all four options Ko’s administration proposed for the area’s development, not to mention that many residents were probably unsure what they were voting for given the development plans’ abstruse designs and the insufficient time relevant agencies took to explain them.
With such an insufficient understanding of public opinion, Ko should not have decided to “just go ahead with the plan and make adjustments later,” but rather delayed the vote to allow more time for officials to better explain the proposals. Then, a consensus between residents and the city might have been reached.
Similarly, Ko should not have just decided that Taipei’s traffic congestion was mainly attributable to illegal parking and that eTag sensors would be installed without realizing the consequences such a move would have.
To begin with, the city’s parking management personnel — who make a living giving out parking invoices — would have to be laid off, in the same way that freeway toll collectors lost their jobs after toll collection became automated.
Ironically, Ko was a vocal supporter of the laid-off freeway toll collectors before he became mayor.
In addition, the sensors would cost the city an estimated NT$9.35 billion (US$281.4 million), a sum far in excess of the money needed to pay parking management personnel salaries.
None of that matters now. Ko has made the call and the sensors will be installed.
The removal of the railway station’s sign was just as despotic.
Since the station’s completion in 1989, the bilingual sign had given countless foreigners and locals new to Taipei information on their travel, telling them where to transfer, and how to link to other trains and Taipei’s mass rapid transit system.
It is infuriating that the city always claims that it values cultural assets yet still fails miserably to preserve what was probably the most definitive cultural asset in Taipei residents’ recent memory.
Ko is now in the US, busy trying to help Taiwanese high-tech firms attract investments from Silicon Valley, but his trip would have more value if he consulted his US counterparts on the role of the democratic process in public affairs — before he makes even more arbitrary decisions.
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