On Monday last week, Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) left Taiwan for Japan, while Hsinchu Deputy Mayor Tsai Li-ching (蔡麗清) was suddenly “asked to resign.”
Given that deputy mayors are supposed to handle municipal affairs when mayors are outside of the country, this has caused a stir.
A city government functions with a mayor and deputy mayors, so that the absence of the mayor does not cause disruptions. What is confusing in the case of the Hsinchu City Government is that Kao, while she was away, announced that the deputy mayor would be changed.
This might have caused Tsai — who departed a few days later — to lose interest in her government work and would have made it impossible for her to supervise employees as an “about to resign” deputy mayor.
With Kao away, the city government would have been in a state of limbo.
Kao’s handling of personnel affairs is extremely irresponsible. She simply did what she wanted, despite the disruption to the functioning of the city government.
Some suspect that the announcement of Tsai’s resignation had something to do with the Hsinchu Baseball Stadium case, which has upset Kao.
Another reason might be that Tsai had to resign so that Kao could get out of a corruption lawsuit she faces.
Tsai was recruited by Kao only a few months ago, but the deputy mayor had not made any major mistakes. Even though Tsai has not made a great contribution as deputy mayor, she has worked for the city for some time.
She was asked to leave without even the consolation of being allowed to resign of her own volition — a move that can only be described as ruthless.
However, Kao’s actions are not surprising. After all, she reportedly deducted expenses from her assistants’ payrolls and asked them to put their overtime pay into a “providence fund.”
Her mean attitude toward her assistants is exactly the way she treated her deputy mayor, demonstrating what kind of person she is.
Huang Wei-ping works in public service.
Translated by Emma Liu
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