City councilors in both Taipei and Kaohsiung yesterday applauded the central government's decision to switch the venue of the national lantern festival from Taipei to Kaohsiung this year, but they also said that more attention should be paid to the development of southern Taiwan.
Taipei has traditionally been the center of attention during the lantern festival. Kaohsiung will this year be hosting the national event for the first time.
PHOTO: CHEN-CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
The move comes as no surprise since the DPP-led administration made it clear in May last year when it took office that it would pay greater attention than KMT governments have done to the development of southern Taiwan, traditionally the main center for DPP electoral support.
It then removed many national celebration activities, including the Double Tenth Day and the upcoming Lantern Festival, from Taipei.
As most city councilors argued that the move was politically motivated, some said that the central government was just trying to narrow the economic gap between the north and the south.
But Taipei City Councilor Jeffery Sheu (許淵國) of the People First Party said that a single event was simply not enough to narrow the gap.
"I don't see the people in Kaohsiung benefiting much from one single event," he said. "What the Chen administration should aim for is a well-grounded plan for the long-term development of the area."
Although Kaohsiung City Councilor Hsiao Yu-cheng (蕭裕正) of the DPP agreed with Sheu's argument, he said that the central government was heading in the right direction.
"It at least gives us a real boost in confidence and lets us feel for once that we're not, after all, a neglected child of the central government," he said.
Besides, Hsiao added, Kaohsiung was more deserving of hosting the national festival than Taipei.
"While Taipei is so well off that it's capable of hosting a lantern festival of its own, Kaohsiung cannot afford to do so," he said.
"With the venue switched, Kaohsiung residents get to celebrate the national festivity together with the entire nation."
Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Huang Chi-chuan (黃啟川) of the KMT said that although it seemed obvious that the DPP is attempting to court its southern supporters, he would like to see more substantial plans carried out.
"For example, we'd like to see Kaohsiung harbor handed over from the central government to Kaohsiung City and we'd like to see the Meinung Dam built," he said.
The controversial construction of the Meinung Dam was temporarily halted after President Chen Shui-bian (
Huang added that they would also like to see the restoration of social order.
Statistics show that although crime in Kaohsiung dropped over the past three years, there were 260 criminal cases per 10,000 people in Kaohsiung last year, or 154 more than in Taipei.
In addition, something needs to be done to improve Kaohsiung's unemployment rate, Huang said.
Last year Taiwan's unemployment rate hit 3.23 percent, while it was 3.4 percent in the Kaohsiung area.
Huang's remark was echoed by Kaohsiung City Councilor Tsai Ma-fu (
"What concerns us most is the poor quality of our drinking water," he said.
The Kaohsiung metropolitan area gets most of its water supply from the Kaoping River, which has been notoriously polluted for decades.
One of the most recent incidents took place in July last year when a waste handling firm dumped toxic chemical solvents into the river.
Millions of people were left without water.
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