Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday reaffirmed his choice of Ho Chin-liang (何金梁) as the chief executive officer responsible for the Taipei Dome construction project.
Ko’s choice has aroused controversy because of Ho’s previous experience as a sports commissioner under the administration of former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌).
During his time in office, Ho faced criticism from city councilors for seeking financing for an expensive new office and allegedly giving expensive gifts to International University Sports Federation (FISU) officials on behalf of the city during its bid for the 2017 Universiade.
Hau in the final months of his administration appointed Ho as a city government technical superintendent, allowing Ho to stay on after Ko took over last year.
“If you push aside all officials from the previous administration, it will only make things worse because there will be no way of knowing what happened inside the city administration [during deliberations on the Dome],” Ko said, adding there was no way to find or interpret relevant city documents without the help of former officials.
Ko said he appointed Ho because he believed it was important to establish a professional bureaucracy system.
He said that it should be clear that officials serve city residents rather than the mayor or political parties, adding that he did not care about the political background of ordinary officials as long as they do their tasks diligently in accordance with the law.
When asked about Ho’s previous attempt to finance an expensive new office, Ko said Ho has a simple desk in the mayor’s office suite, adding that he is Ho’s direct supervisor.
Taipei Department of Sports Deputy Commissioner Ting Juo-ting (丁若亭) said Ho would be responsible for overseeing implementation of the city’s contract with Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設), the Dome’s contractor.
Previously, contract oversight responsibilities were split between a Dome executive secretary who was responsible for managing everyday affairs and the sports department commissioner who was responsible for signing all official documents.
Ho will assume both sets of responsibilities as part of the city government’s move to reduce the department commissioner’s work load, Ting said.
Aside from Ho, Ko has raised eyebrows with his appointments of former officials from the Hau administration to important city positions, including former finance commissioner Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) as director of the city’s 2017 Universiade office.
Chiu was acquitted last year of charges relating to the Taipei Twin Towers bribery scandal.
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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