Addressing women’s groups yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) mayoral candidate for Taipei in the November elections, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), said good governance was his forte and promised to complete his term if he were elected.
Su told a roomful of women wearing pink outfits at the Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Club in downtown Taipei that he was a pragmatic politician who had dreams and took concrete action to realize them.
“It is not enough to have dreams. You must take action,” he said. “I am running for Taipei mayor not because I want the job, but because I want to use the position to fairly allocate resources so the city will become better, more competitive, more beautiful and more interesting.”
The resources would go to education, women, childcare, ethnic groups and tree planting, he said, adding that the more disadvantaged the groups, the more resources they would get.
As the only man in his family, Su said he learned from experience that families faced several challenges, including care for the elderly, employment for middle-aged married women, daycare for working mothers, medical care for premature babies and discrimination against Aborigines.
One of Su’s son-in-laws is Amis. Su said he did not know how the tribe named their children until his granddaughter was born. She was given the tribal name Saumah Su Fangas. Saumah was the name of his son-in-law’s mother. Su was his last name and Fangas was the last name of his son-in-law.
Su welled up when he talked about one of his granddaughters who was born prematurely.
“It requires more than a slogan to address the problem of the low birth rate,” he said, referring to the government’s much-criticized plan to offer monetary rewards for catchy slogans to encourage childbirth, since the country’s birth rate is now the world’s lowest.
Su, who was elected Pingtung County commissioner and Taipei County commissioner, said he was confident he could make the capital a better place if given a chance. He also promised not quit his job halfway through to run for president in 2012.
“If my achievements in Taipei County were the egg white, what I will achieve in Taipei City will be the egg yolk,” he said. “It is my specialty to run the county and city. It will take me no time to do a fine job right after I am elected.”
The key, he said, lay in the attitude of the person in charge and the ability to deliver, adding that as long as the direction was correct, he could reach the final destination if he worked hard.
However, he acknowledged the difficulty of winning the city traditionally dominated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Su’s wife described him as someone who loved his family and took good care of his parents. He was also an honest man resolute in his actions. However, he sometimes had a bad temper, she said.
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