Taipei Dome: an Issue Reemerging after Being Entangled for Three Years Between Ko and the Green

 Taipei Dome: an Issue Reemerging after Being Entangled for Three Years Between Ko and the Green

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

December 19, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

When Ko Wen-je came to office four years ago, he zeroed in on the Taipei Dome as a scandal to beat, endlessly saying that he would dismantle it, ending in the complete stop of construction. Now that he was reelected with a mere little over 3,000 votes, eventually he has publicly stated to continue Taipei Dome’s construction, and requested the assistance of the central government. He chose the "Tsai-Ko meeting" to toss out this matter, wanting, on the one hand, to exert pressure on the Culture Ministry through President Tsai, and, on the other hand, appealing to public opinion to accuse the Culture Ministry of highhandedness, while completely forgetting how haughty and powerful his posture was when he had insisted on blocking the Taipei Dome at the very beginning.

In the squabbling between Culture Minister Cheng Li-chiun and Ko Wen-je, the two took the matter with easy, but could not conceal the ugly reality that the Taipei Dome is being dragged for more than three years by the central and local governments jointly. Taipei City Hall and the Culture Ministry have been communicating for over three years, yet the matter still stops at the level of talking past each other; we could see what kind of efficiency the Tsai government and Ko’s City Hall have. Look at the issue raised by Ko Wen-je, it boils down to the matter of the corridor as the Taipei Dome faces the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park to the north and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall to the south, which had been planned during the term of mayor Hao Lung-pin. At the time, it equally involved historical relics and cultural heritage; however, why did it become a Gordian knot in the hands of the Ko City Hall and the Tsai government?

Speaking plainly, this is the inevitable result of “politics rule supreme” on the part of both the Ko and Green camps. First, in the beginning, the crowd capacity was excessively high in the design of the Taipei Dome, entailing safety misgivings regarding crowd dispersal. Ko Wen-je could, if he had wanted to, demand Farglory to reduce the crowd capacity of construction to within the parameters of the contract; however, he insisted that the Taipei Dome was a "scandal." Second, after failing to find illegalities, Ko Wen-je should have let Farglory resume construction as soon as possible; however, he was worried that he would find himself in an untenable situation, hence, he left the Taipei Dome construction project to remain paralyzed, then pushing the responsibility to the central government. Third, the cooperation and division between the Ko and Green camps were off and on; the Tsai government's position has also been stringent and lenient intermittently in the review process over cultural heritage, which is under the purview of the Culture Ministry, applying the brakes whenever it could. Now that Ko and the Green camp have parted ways, it would probably not be easy for Ko Wen-je to secure the Culture Ministry’s assistance.

The Taipei Dome has been blocked like a caged bull by Taipei City Hall and the Culture Ministry for over three years; it could neither be built nor could it be dismantled. From this scenario, we could see that both the Ko City Hall and the Green government are incompetent, but with extremely strong capacity to block projects. As to the stalling of construction and the loss of public funds, they are left to the burden of the people.

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