Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday accused Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) of spending too much effort on muddling, and too little energy on explaining how he would make Taipei a better city.
“I wouldn’t comment on who is a better [candidate], because each of them have their pluses and minuses,” Lee said in response to media queries about the candidates in the Taipei mayoral election.
Lee was speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Taipei on the Sino-Japanese War that ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1894 and led to the Japanese takeover of Taiwan in 1895. He delivered a speech at the conference.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
“My advice is that candidates should stop conducting smear campaigns and clearly tell the public how they would make Taipei a better city,” Lee told reporters.
Commenting on Lien’s recent newspaper ads attacking independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and his campaign team, Lee said that “everyone knows what kind of person he [Lien] is. Instead of spending so much time and money on this, he should be focused on city governance.”
“That’s just muddling,” he added.
Lee said that as the leader of a capital, there is much that the city government could do. For instance, he said that there is room for improvement in the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法), which stipulates that the contractor who submits the lowest tender for public construction tenders should be given the job.
“But the problem is, with lower budgets, contractors would try to cut down on costs everywhere and the quality of public construction projects would be compromised as a result,” he said. “This is something that can be improved.”
Lee said he served as Taipei mayor from 1978 to 1981 and knows very well that the job is challenging, but he believes there is always a solution to any problem when a mayor stays focused.
He also commented on the lawsuit between the KMT and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) on Wang’s party membership, saying the KMT should consider giving up the lawsuit.
“The KMT should be ashamed of filing a lawsuit against Wang using evidence collected through illegal wiretapping,” Lee said. “As former prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) has been found guilty [of illegally leaking confidential information gathered through an illegal wiretap of Wang’s telephone], the KMT should consider whether it should give up the lawsuit.”
Lee was referring to an illegal lobbying allegation involving Wang and Democratic Progressive Party Caucus Whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) based on a voice recording of a telephone conversation between the two.
However, Huang was later prosecuted and found guilty of leaking information, as he showed case files to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) when the case was still under investigation by the judiciary.
At the same time, the KMT and Wang have been involved in a legal battle about whether Wang should lose his party membership. The KMT has twice lost the case in court, yet is still trying to appeal the court’s decision.
Lee yesterday also panned the recent cooking oil scandals as a result of improper relations between large corporates and politicians.
“The government should be working in the interests of the nation and the public, not some business leaders,” Lee said.
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