The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Taipei and Sinbei mayoral candidates — Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and former vice premier Eric Chu (朱立倫) — yesterday linked their election campaigns, pledging to facilitate transportation construction and develop technology industries through cooperation.
Amid the cheers of dozens of party stalwarts, as well as city and county councilors, Hau and Chu said in a joint press conference that the two cities shared the goal of pushing for 10 MRT line projects in the greater Taipei area to be completed by 2015, including the Xinzhuang Line and the line to Taipei Taoyuan International Airport.
“The MRT has changed the lives of both Taipei and Sinbei residents and has connected the two cities. The launch of more MRT lines will further build the two cities into a greater area, and Mr Hau and I will work together to serve the 6.5 million residents of the two cities,” Chu said at the Mayor’s Residence Arts Salon in Taipei.
With the completion of the Xinzhuang Line in 2012 and other MRT lines, the MRT network will expand by 30km in Taipei City and 57km in Taipei County, which will be upgraded in December and renamed Sinbei City.
Describing Chu as an old friend and colleague at National Taiwan University and a fellow legislator, Hau echoed Chu’s pledge to seek closer cooperation between Taipei and Sinbei cities, vowing to turn the area into an Asian economic and trade hub and attract Taiwanese companies in China to set up their headquarters in Taiwan.
“We will create a win-win situation via cooperation between the two cities. The cooperation between Mr Chu and I has been smooth, and we will continue our cooperation to push for the prosperity of the two cities,” Hau said.
Yesterday’s joint press conference marked the first of a series of joint election events the Hau and Chu camps plan to hold. The KMT sought to appeal to voters by highlighting close cooperation between Hau and Chu in continuing municipal construction as they seek to be elected over the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate, former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), and the DPP’s Sinbei mayoral candidate, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) .
Hau’s camp said that Hau and Chu would jointly present more policies to stress cooperation.
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