Last Saturday, EBC broadcast footage of a road block on Freeway No. 3 resulting from Democratic Progressive Party vice-presidential candidate Chen Chien-jen’s motorcade passing through for an election campaign event. 

The fuming passenger who shot the video footage complained that politicians seemed to forget that ordinary citizens also have their own business to conduct and schedules to accede to. It was not immediately clear whether Chen was aware that the cordon had been put in place for him.

On Monday, The Apple Daily further reported that a train was delayed for two minutes to accommodate the schedule of Taiwan High Speed Rail Company CEO James Jeng. The train subsequently arrived on schedule, although the procedure to delay the train in the first place was not categorized as an operational irregularity.

In the case of Chen, highway and security officials stated that the temporary road block had been preapproved and was not the result of special privileges. In the case of the high-speed rail delay, Jeng defended his actions saying that he needed to board the train in order to attend a briefing with Premier Mao Chi-kuo in Miaoli.

These two incidents illustrate the prioritization of public infrastructure for high-level officials. In the first instance, partisan and electoral interests of an individual seeking public office trumped the public good.

In the second instance, a corporate leader used the excuse of attending a government meeting to subordinate the itineraries of the remaining passengers of the high-speed train. They remind us of when unpopular and frequent traffic cordons were set up for former premier Lien Chan as he insisted on going home to have lunch with his mother. 

Most of the public can understand the need to protect public figures for reasons of national security. But when public transportation infrastructure is put at the whim of those few with power merely to make their campaign itineraries convenient, it becomes a wanton abuse of power that symbolizes two systems: one for the narrow interests of ruling elites and another for the subordinate citizen.

Politicians and candidates for public office should receive adequate protection but not a blanket prioritization over the rest of the country’s citizens. When elites become totally divorced from the daily incidents that most of us have to face, their governance will not be publicly minded. 

The corporate leaders can learn to plan their itineraries around obstructions, while politicians from all political parties can also empathize with the rest of the population for which traffic jams and missed trains are a fact of life.

By Yuan-Ming Chiao

Yuan-Ming Chiao is a reporter at the China Post. — Ed.

(Asia News Network)