No one knows which strategies will prove most effective in the fight against COVID-19, but a meeting of Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) clearly showed the volatility of political idolatry.
Their meeting at a news conference at Taipei’s Huannan Market on Friday provided much food for thought, because Ko has apparently been competing with Chen over whose disease control strategy is more effective. Additionally, Chen is considered a potential Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate for next year’s Taipei mayoral election.
A poll conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation from June 15 to 19 found that Ko’s Taiwan People’s Party garnered a 7.1 percentage point increase in support from the previous month, while the DPP’s and the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) numbers dropped slightly.
However, the poll was conducted before the public became aware of the severity of the outbreaks at three wholesale markets. As of yesterday, the number of infections connected to these markets had surpassed 200, while the Huannan Market cluster had passed 100 cases.
The prolonged outbreak in the capital is likely to dash many people’s hopes that the pandemic alert level will be lowered after July 12.
On June 24, Ko said that the cluster at the firm’s markets was “not as bad as you think” and persisted in his strategy of using rapid virus tests before administering vaccines and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for thousands of market workers, although Chen a day earlier advised the city government to primarily use PCR testing to identify all infections at the markets.
When the city government began conducting large-scale PCR testing on Thursday last week, at least 41 cases were identified from the Huannan Market, showing that Chen’s judgement was accurate.
However, Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center, is not always correct. Over the past few months, he has drawn no less criticism for the center’s vaccination rollout and easing quarantine rules for airline crew in April, the latter considered the most likely cause of the local outbreak.
When Chen was at the peak of his popularity, he helped promote agricultural products at daily news briefings, and he was even invited by pop star Chan Ya-wen (詹雅雯) to sing at her concert at the Taipei Arena in September last year.
Political idolatry is commonplace in Taiwan, but a cruel fact is that voters can adore their idols at one moment, but spurn them at the next, if they find that their heroes are ordinary people who make mistakes and get lost in their hubris.
During the Friday news conference, even independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐), elected from Wanhua District, where the Huannan Market is located, was accused by some market vendors of paying inadequate attention to their concerns since the outbreak started, after Lim criticized Ko for his delayed virus responses.
The outbreak has accelerated the turnover rates of political stars.
Some social media users have joked that the news conference at the Huannan Market was one of the best since the outbreak started, given that it dramatically demonstrated the intriguing relationships between the central and local governments.
Other online commentators said they agreed with the vendors who chided the legislator, because they spoke the truth: The public want their normal lives back rather than more political shows.
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