Help me Mr Mayor

I really need to have a private meeting with the Taipei Mayor and ask him, as a favour to me, to up his game and start behaving like a competent city leader. 

Otherwise, it would seem I am condemned to putting up with a partner who I have to scrape off the ceiling every morning, and then who spends the rest of the day with gritted teeth,  hammering away at her keyboard like a thing demented.

Surely he’s been in the job long enough by now to at least begin to grasp that while he thinks he is the most important and smartest person in the country he actually is not, not by a long way, and surrounding himself with a team with no apparent talent only makes things worse for himself and everyone he is nominally leading. 

I say nominally, because it seems that the Central Government has found a way around his obtuse obstructiveness, pointless rhetoric, misunderstanding of the wider issues and generally daft ideas and incompetence. It would seem a good thing that they have found a way to put Victor in charge and have marginalised the doctor for the time being at least.  

The press conference at the Wholesale Market yesterday was telling. Uncle Chen addressed the issues briefly and the immediate problems involved in his usual calm and measured way. Then a much longer diatribe from the doctor who, as usual, went off on his usual tangents, ignored the central questions and blamed everyone but himself for the outbreak. 

Small wonder our ex-Rock star lost it. His fiery outburst was the best part of the performance by a long way.  Chen’s face was a picture as he just stared at the ground...was that the hint of a smile I saw play briefly across his lips? I really think it was. He knew, as did everyone now does, that our doctor has been effectively pushed aside and others, like Victor can now get on with doing the right thing at the right time and repairing the damage. 

I was particularly interested to hear that the doc has hesitated to do PCR tests for all the workers including those who came in from elsewhere to work in Taipei because they were not residents in the City and the cost would come from his budget. Well there’s neighbourly for you. Japan sends in millions of vaccines to Taiwan free, while he begrudges to test those who work in his city, but don’t live there.  

Being a doctor you’d have thought he would be keen to help people no matter who they were, or where they came from. I thought this particularly mean, and just too far from the spirit of what leaders should be pushing for in terms of community spirit and sharing at a time of national crisis.

Taipei is, after all, the richest city in Taiwan. You would have thought someone who has an eye on the Presidency would have the sense to at least appear a bit more sharing. Not to mention displaying a bit more leadership, and taking responsibility and not blaming everyone else for anything that goes wrong. His behaviour would appear to make a joke of any Presidential ambitions he might have.