Taipei City Government allegations of illegal profiteering are “cooked-up charges” based on a “strained interpretation” of the facts, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said at a news conference yesterday.
Ma questioned the methods of the city’s Clean Government Committee, which has said that Ma, while Taipei mayor, agreed to Taipei Dome contract terms allowing Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) to rake in illegal profits.
“I feel [the committee] first came to a conclusion and then looked for evidence,” Ma said, adding that people related to the case would demonstrate that there had been no illegal activity in each instance cited by the city.
Ma also responded to remarks made by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Sunday challenging Ma to account for an alleged difference between his “real” and nominal campaign financing.
“There was absolutely nothing of this kind,” Ma said.
Ma also said that some of Ko’s comments demonstrate that Ko himself viewed some of the actions of the Clean Government Committee as inappropriate.
At a conference on the capital’s build-operate-transfer projects, Ko said that five projects being investigated should be referred to as “major cases” instead of as “major corruption cases.”
Ko yesterday said he would handle the case as soon as the city’s Department of Government Ethics sent him documents for approval.
He added the he could not stand the “nitpicking” over his wording in referring to city investigations.
“I do not see any difference between ‘five major cases,’ ‘five corruption cases,’ and ‘five strange cases,’” Ko said, comparing analysis of his word choice to the exegesis of ancient Chinese texts.
Meanwhile, former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said on Facebook Ko that should “find his conscience,” adding that Ko had chosen to “pick fights” to raise his stature.
Ko said Hau was “irritable,” and denied making malicious remarks about the former mayor.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
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