It would be flattering to New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) to compare him to former US president Richard Nixon and underestimating him to compare him to Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo. Hou’s series of irresponsible moves — such as withholding evidence, shifting responsibility and sheltering subordinates — proves that an old dog cannot learn new tricks.
Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Arredondo’s slow response to the shooting at a Texas school last month and the “En En incident” all involved audio recordings.
Nixon wanted to destroy 18 minutes of taped evidence against him, Arredondo could not hide the 73 minutes of emergency call recordings and Hou continues to withhold 119 audio recordings made by the parents of a two-year-old boy nicknamed En En (恩恩), who became the first child in Taiwan to die from a COVID-19-related condition. An ambulance for En En arrived 81 minutes after the first call.
However, the truth will come out. As “Deep Throat” unraveled Watergate, scandal-hungry media descended like vultures, and Arredondo has been blamed for the botched response to the school shooting. Despite Hou’s efforts to cover up the recordings and evade responsibility, he could not stop concerned citizens from uncovering the truth.
In the Uvalde incident, audio recordings revealed key evidence, and Arredondo has been suspended and could be fired.
So far, Hou, a former Criminal Investigation Bureau commissioner, has withheld evidence, lambasted a whistle-blower and rubbed salt in the wounds of the child’s family. Without a shred of evidence, he has reprimanded legislators for providing evidence.
Having been educated during the Martial Law era, Hou is adept at using bureaucratic language to muddy the waters and creating cock-and-bull stories. Those who lived under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), are familiar with this type of response. Authoritarian police became used to prevaricating.
Hou’s authoritarian mindset led to his poor response. After all, in their view, those in power do not need to account for their actions, so there is no need to prove their innocence. When whistle-blowers come forward with evidence, the powerful accuse them of sowing confusion.
Having taken a page out of his authoritarian background, Hou would be mistaken to think he can get away with following the KMT’s corrupt habit of sweeping scandals under the rug.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Rita Wang
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
RSS