Lung Ying-tai (
Since then, a conflict has been brewing between Lung and Lin Mun-lee (
Before the dispute, Iap Phok-bun (
These problems didn't surface with the Taipei City government after Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected as the city's mayor in December of 1998, but became media headlines after he invited Lung from her home in Germany to head the new bureau on Nov. 6 of last year.
And so it seems that politics don't exist without culture and culture is actually a response to politics.
Take Lung's "half year press conference" as an example. Held on May 4, the anniversary of the "May Fourth Movement (
When then-Taipei Mayor Chen tried to install his colleague, Lo Wen-chia (
Even if it is possible to let "culture be culture and politics be politics," Lung should be very careful to do her job, for she is the first woman to decide who can and should share more resources.
But Lung seems to not be paying attention to this. That was the reason she was criticized for not giving sufficient weight to Taiwan as having its own culture, but for being a famous writer with a "greater China complex."
Lung once penned an article criticizing President Lee Teng-hui (
On Jan. 24, this newspaper ran an editorial saying that Lung was not suitable to be a governmental official.
The editorial said that "Lung's independent working style, weak personal skills and self-centered attitude have made her hard to work with. Worse still, her pride as an intellectual and, dare we say, her perception that, as a mainlander, she is culturally superior show through her words and actions."
One example of this, Lee Min-yung (
If Eberhard Diepgen, mayor of Berlin, should be blamed for his absence at the ground-breaking ceremony of German's first national Holocaust memorial museum, then Taipei citizens should consider wether they need a new director for their Cultural Affairs Bureau or a new Taipei City mayor.
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