Rashomon at Maokong

Nobody knows who is telling the truth about the Maokong incident. The truth may never come out, even if the Taipei District Court hears the Taipei version of Rashomon.

But there is one aspect that is true.

The Democratic Progressive Party is going all out to get President Ma Ying-jeou implicated for supposedly poor decisions made when he was Taipei mayor.

Hung is after Ma, just like his city council colleague Chuang Jui-hsiung who has made it his job to prove Ma did something wrong in deciding to build and operate Maokong Gondola.

They both belong to the minority party in Taipei City Hall. Maokong Gondola is probably the only legacy Ma has left after the eight years while he was mayor of Taipei.

It's quite likely that the Maokong project wasn't implemented properly. Maybe insufficient research was done to find out whether the soil at Muzha wasn't solid enough for the cable car system. Or there might be some defects in the design.

As a matter of fact, Ma was stranded together with Mayor Hau Lung-bin of Taipei in a car hanging in the air for nearly half an hour on the day the service was opened.

Ma was considered invincible right after his inauguration as president on May 20 last year. The only thing the opposition party can really do to boost their situation is to discredit him as Taipei's worst mayor. Its city councilors are just toeing the party line.

On the other hand, the National Communications Commission is looking into the alleged trespassing and intrusion by the two Formosa TV reporters. The city government said they were there to cover Hung's expose of what the opposition calls the Maokong scandal at his request.

The NCC is trying to ascertain whether it's a stage-managed TV expose, like the “foot-side rice” scandal of 2005. A New Party city councilman stage-managed a TV expose of eateries near the city funeral parlor that retrieved the rice offered at the foot of the deceased to serve their customers.

Local custom requires cooked rice to be offered to the deceased to be kept at the parlor before their funeral and burial. The councilor had to resign, and the ETTV cable TV network had one of its channels that aired the expose suspended by the NCC.

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