After completing his first task as Premier (“Cockroach-Kun: William Lai’s First Task; Lai-God is still Lai-God after all”), Premier William Lai visited the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) for an “inspection” as Typhoon Talim approached, during which he demanded the CWB officials: “The Weather Bureau must be more accurate.”
Pro-Blue commentators say this is William Lai’s Prince’s Revenge, because two previous typhoon forecasts completely shattered the “Lai-God” myth. Every year, typhoons—along with the railway relocation case—are the source of the most severe criticism against Lai and his worst administrative experiences. Basically, one could say the “Lai-God” name was made by typhoons and broken by typhoons.
Regardless of William Lai’s current or previous titles, his most well-known identity is that of a medical doctor. Originally, being a doctor, like being a lawyer or an engineer, should be a job requiring the highest logical training (Lawyer rule? Doctor rule? None are as good as Engineer rule!!).
However, Lai’s statement today—“Weather Bureau, be more accurate”—gives the impression that this doctor’s logical training is extremely poor. At the same time, this new Premier appears to be someone who does not understand how to respect professional expertise.
No wonder that besides “Lai-God,” he has recently earned the notorious title of “King of Bullshit” (Ganhua Wang) (The Unveiling of William Lai: A Three-Part Drama of Lai-God, King of Bullshit, and King of Empty Words).
The Central Weather Bureau’s forecasting technology depends on years of painstaking research by scholars worldwide and supercomputer processing power. Today’s forecasting capabilities are sparks born from the professional accumulation of many predecessors, and our country’s forecasting capability is among the top in the world.
Of course, due to differences in supercomputer processing power, the US and Japan naturally possess superior predictive capabilities. If you, William Lai, had promised today to allocate more budget to the CWB to build a computing system comparable to those of the US and Japan, I believe the citizens would have offered nothing but praise.
But this new Premier, perhaps to settle the score for being called the King of Bullshit, or perhaps truly wishing the CWB were more accurate, instead simply relied on his mouth to say, “You guys need to be more accurate, okay?” This fundamentally negates the expertise and efforts of the CWB and ignores the hard work of many professionals and the development of global technology.
An official who only wants to mock the Weather Bureau in front of the media, who doesn’t understand professional respect, and who is ignorant of current technological limitations—it’s no wonder many people call William Lai the King of Bullshit.