Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) city councilors yesterday harshly criticized the poor performance of Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma, who doubles as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, led his staff in delivering a municipal report to the city council yesterday. The mayor's trips to Europe and the US within the last two months came under fire during the question-and-answer session, as DPP city councilors lashed out at Ma for being frequently absent from his post to promote the KMT.
"The municipal development projects all sounded wonderful at the beginning, like the gorgeous carriages in Cinderella's story. But then they changed back into pumpkins," DPP City Councilor Chou Wei-you (
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
The Longshan Temple underground shopping street, for example, was expected to revive the district's economy when it was inaugurated. However, the shopping street has failed to become an attraction and the company managing the project has recently dropped out, he said.
DPP City Councilor Lee Chian-chang (
"The `Ma Ying-jeou phenomenon' should be called the `Ma Ying-jeou illusion' instead. Our mayor is so busy with his duties as KMT chairman that the city government is like a carriage with no driver now," Lee said.
DPP City Councilor Hsu Chia-chin (
"You have less than a year left as the mayor, and yet your staff came out with these new policies that don't even have written proposals or budgets yet. How are you planning to finish them?" she asked.
Ma denied coining or promoting the phrase the "Ma Ying-jeou phenomenon" -- a term used by the media to describe the mayor's current popularity.
"The term was first mentioned by former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), not me. I said it's an illusion when I heard the term, and the illusion was created by you [the DPP]," he said.
The mayor then defended his municipal policies and said that the city government had presented new projects as part of its vision for the city's future.
"I can't just stop making municipal plans during my last year in the city government ... A city can't live without dreams, and we need to continuously present our ideas," Ma said.
"I had frequent phone conversations with my deputy mayors during my trips to foreign countries, and so I am always keeping an eye on things in the city government," he added.
Ma said he expected the city government to continuously push for municipal projects with a total value of about NT$60 billion (US$1.9 billion). He also called on the government to use Songshan Airport as the airport to inaugurate direct flights across the Taiwan Strait.
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