Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) established his campaign headquarters yesterday, saying next month’s election was a choice between opening up the city and shutting it down.
Hau, whose popularity has declined amid controversy over the upcoming Taipei International Flora Exposition, said the latest internal party poll showed that he was leading by a small margin.
“The lead was not significant, but I am confident that I will prevail,” he said.
PHOTO: Ou Su-mei, Taipei Times
He said his confidence came from the realization of his -election platform four years ago and the backing of the party and his supporters.
Hau criticized his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) opponent Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) for -knowing little about Taipei and following an economic policy of “locking up” the nation.
“I define the November elections as a choice between opening up and shutting down; between building the city and serving one person’s political agenda,” he said, adding that although he was not good at expressing himself with words, he was a man of action.
As his campaign theme was “Taipei, fly high,” Hau said the -timing was now perfect to let Taipei soar. Since Taipei and Beijing signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in June, Hau said industries in Taipei City are expected to produce profits of about NT$70 billion (US$2.25 billion) and that the financial services and tourism sectors were estimated to create more than 18,000 job opportunities.
Liberalization made the capital city more competitive, he said. Direct aviation links with big neighboring cities have made Taipei Songshan Airport an international airport and Taipei City an international city, he said.
Criticizing the DPP’s pledge that it wanted to lead Taiwan in connecting with the world, Hau said he did not see it happening during the eight years when the DPP was in power. Rather, it adopted a “locking up” policy, undermining the economy, losing professional talent and capital and lowering competitiveness, Hau said.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), at the same occasion yesterday, said Hau had outperformed him as Taipei mayor and asked the public to give Hau another four years so he could do more.
Alluding to Su’s campaign slogan, “Taipei surpasses Taipei,” -former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) encouraged Hau to lead the city to “surpass itself and surpass its past.”
At a separate setting later yesterday, Ma said next month’s elections were important for the implementation of his government’s policies, adding that if the heads of the five special municipalities were all against the ECFA, it would be difficult to push the policy.
Describing the trade pact as “a mutual trust mechanism in a different form,” Ma said both sides would build even more mutual trust through supplementary agreements.
“It will be very dangerous if local governments are at odds with the central government over major policies,” he said. “We cannot afford to ignore China, which is the world’s largest export entity and second-largest import market.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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