Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) former campaign executive director, Yao Li-ming (姚立明), drew fire with recent remarks that Ko deliberately planned the “Seven Steps in Taipei” event during the campaign period to avoid having to join Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in a rally.
Speaking on a political commentary show on Friday, Yao said Ko’s campaign decided to organize “Seven Steps in Taipei” after the DPP invited him to pair up with Tsai to take part in a campaign parade with the party’s Taipei City councilor candidates.
Yao said he worried that Ko might lose 5 percent of votes if he appeared with Tsai in a campaign event and thus turned down the DPP’s invitation, organizing “Seven Steps in Taipei” to avoid an encounter with Tsai.
“Seven Steps in Taipei” refers to a series of campaign activities on Nov. 27 — two days before the election on Nov. 29 — last year, during which Ko visited seven symbolic places in Taipei, mostly on the city’s outskirts.
The remarks triggered criticism from DPP politicians.
“As far as the campaign strategy is concerned, there’s nothing wrong with Ko wanting votes from DPP supporters, but not the burden [of a DPP connection] — Ko knows it, the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] knows it, the DPP knows it — of course DPP leaders and Tsai know it as well,” DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) said on Facebook. “But it’s a bit hurtful when you say these things publicly after getting elected, especially when you said it as if Tsai had nowhere to go and wanted to stalk Ko.”
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said that the DPP and its supporters offered Ko a lot of help and greatly contributed to his election win.
“I think that Ko and Yao should show some appreciation to the DPP and Tsai, and avoid hurting their allies,” Kuan said.
Hung Chih-kun (洪智坤), a close assistant and adviser of Ko’s, rebutted Yao’s remarks.
“What Yao said was absolutely not true,” he said. “During the election campaign, Ko’s campaign office had close and smooth communications with the DPP and the idea of trying to avoid them did not exist.”
“In fact, the first thing that Ko said in his victory speech was: ‘Thanks to the DPP for yielding,’” Hung added.
Another assistant of Ko’s, Sidney Lin (林鶴明), who planned the “Seven Steps in Taipei,” also said that the event had nothing to do with wanting to avoid Tsai.
He said Ko’s campaign office had learned that then-KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) planned to have a parade through the city, so they tried to avoid adding more chaos to the city.
“The idea behind Seven Steps in Taipei was to manifest Ko, an unconventional politician, in a creative way,” Lin said. “If you really have to say that we’re trying to avoid something, maybe I’d say that we tried to avoid the torrential rainfall in the city and the traffic jam that it created.”
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