Mayor Ko, a
reformer of Taipei/Carlos Pueblo
I have been
watching the performance of Mayor Ko, a reformer of
Taipei,
Taiwan since 2014, before his campaign for the mayor for the
capital city
of Taiwan and his performance after the inauguration. I
also have
been amazed for his energy and dedication to work to his
job as a
surgeon before and a politician now. Recently, I watch his
interviews
with television and radio on Youtube video and his second
annual
report to the city council about his achievement so far. He also
reminds his
audience about his philosophy and desire to build Taipei
for the
citizen now as well as the future generation of Taiwan.
At the
beginning of his mayor ship, he tackled 5 huge corruption city
government projects
such as a sport dome, two new subway station plazas,
and a new
shopping center. All projects have been under a program called
BOT,build-operate-transfer,
a kind of design involving private investment
and two
previous mayors of Taipei. We don’t see this kind of program in
a developed
nation for example in the U.S. Three projects have been settled
with the
private companies for the dispute, one land purchase by the city
was illegal
and the city is required to reimburse the land owners, and finally
the spot
dome has been prohibited to continue the construction due to
illegal
construction of a different design.
His city
team has done several re-innovation of traditional market projects.
He counts
four of them and now approaching to a market where his wife,
Dr. Peggy
Chen Ko shops for grocery, Southgate Market. His philosophy is
do it
quickly as much as you can to solve and improve problems for the
constituent.
He asks his team from vice-mayors down to bureau chiefs to
start their
daily meeting at 7:30 am and he himself has a full schedule lasted
till late at
night almost every day. It is not an exaggeration that many people
have watched
him even since his days at the hospital as a surgeon and professor.
His team has
quickly submitted their plans to Taiwanese National Government
for approval
including a famous old section of Taipei full of illegal construction
and with
threat of flooding. He is a liberal with conscience which he advocates
education
and medical care for the poor. He puts several programs immediately
to improve the
quality of city service i.e. free note book and WiFi access for poor
kids at
school, extended public schools for pre-school, and some weak elder care,
even creates
some kinds of mobile clinical service for the seniors who live at no
elevator
service high rise building. Yet, he is a budgetary conservative. He pays off
300 million
NTS city debt, about 10 million US$ in his first two years in office.
