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Updated Tuesday, August 25, 2009 10:10 am TWN, Simon Shih

What to say about Typhoon Morakot, its aftermath and gov't

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Typhoon Morakot hit Taiwan on August 7 and created havoc in the southern parts of Taiwan. With its record high rainfall (dumping 9-1/2 feet of rain over a three-day period, especially in the mountainous areas in the south), the typhoon caused significant landslides, damaged roadways and bridges, and flooded many townships. The damage was made worse by the slow response by the government and has brought up another political storm for the Ma administration. It has become the local equivalent of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., for which the inefficient govenrment response had such an adverse impact on the former Bush administration that was then in power.

If we can try to review the whole natural disaster from a broader point of view and eliminate any party politics, we can see that Taiwan as an island with very steep mountain ranges and shallow rivers suffers an unusual amount of natural disasters of this kind.

Several observations come to mind: The government must have a better land use policy. Over the years, the government put economic prosperity over environmental/ecological concerns and land is thus over-developed. Government must implement strict environmental evaluation in the future for any development project in the geologically fragile locations.

The government must also have a better emergency response system and must subject this system to tests and drills. One contentious point on this disaster is should President Ma have invoked the “National Security Measures” early on when the flood/landslides had gone out of control?

No matter what the answer is for this pedantic question, the outcome is that the current system has many flaws and is not functioning properly. The ultimate price of this flawed system is the loss of many people' lives and properties.

Finally, the government must see clearly what is its position with regard to China and the U.S. in the national security area.

The Foreign Ministry's bungling of the cable to decline all foreign aid except cash has its root cause in this problem. It is fair to say that Typhoon Morakot has also broken the aura surrounding President Ma. People began to seriously question his leadership quality.

After August 16, he shifted the objective to damage control and apologized publicly on many occasions. Some says he did it too often, and forgot his duty is to amend the consequences of the disaster.

The ramifications are still brewing. The only statement we can utter is that President Ma needs to learn this lesson very quickly and time is running out fast.

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