Taipei mayor-elect Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday defended his city official appointment decisions amid accusations that he is breaking his promises of transparency and selection through collective decisionmaking, and insisted that he has played by the rules, saying that he is upset about the protests.
Since Ko’s election at the end of last month, his appointments of city officials — including directors for the departments of labor, cultural affairs, environmental protection and social affairs — have been followed by protests from selection committee members who have characterized the selection process as opaque and defective.
The latest protest came on Saturday, when the selection committee chair for the director of the department of cultural affairs, Chen Chi-nan (陳其南), published an open letter to Ko, saying that — while he trusted Ko — people around him might be trying to hide things from him. Chen hinted that director-to-be Ni Chong-hua (倪重華) might have “cheated” to get the appointment.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Chen wrote that Ni had arranged for “his people” to be on the committee, to make sure that he would become one of the three finalists from whom Ko and his close associates would choose the director.
“I do not know how to answer the question; isn’t he [Chen] the head of the selection committee?” Ko said when asked to comment on Chen’s accusations outside a training event for his incoming city government team in Taipei yesterday. “I would say that some good accomplishments would be the best answer to these questions.”
Ko said that he and his inner circle have chosen from the three finalists endorsed by the selection committee for the cultural affairs role, and that they were not informed of the scores that each candidate received in the committee vote. While professional capacity is a priority, whether a person would work well with others in the administrative team is also a key factor in selection, he added.
Photo: CNA
Ko appeared to take a harsher stance with the future city officials during the training session.
He said that, though some of the former selection committee members asked him to reconsider some appointments: “I am a very determined person, and since the appointments have been announced, I will not make any changes.”
“These past few days, I have been thinking that maybe I should call these very important people [who protested]. I have not done so yet, because I am upset,” Ko said. “I will think about it.”
Ko also reminded the officials-to-be that — to work as a team — everyone must be honest, so that they trust each other.
“Everyone has one chance to lie to me — and that is before I discover that you lie to me,” Ko said. “If I find out that you have lied to me, you are finished. I will never have you on my team again.”
He said that he would always make decisions supported by evidence.
“Do not tell me that you heard someone saying something. I hate that. If you want to convince me of something, show me the statistics and hard evidence,” Ko said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification