Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday sought to downplay a remark he made a day earlier that he would have people who oppose his policies “arrested,” saying it was directed at “irrational” people who oppose the implementation of government policies.
Asked about public criticism of the city’s Borough and Neighborhood Traffic Improvement Plan, Ko on Thursday said the city government could bypass public opinion and arrest those who oppose the policy after its implementation.
Taipei Department of Transportation officials said that residents living in alleys who refuse to have yellow lines painted outside their doors, which would force them to share parking spaces with others, are a main factor behind the project’s slow progress.
Responding to reporters’ queries after emergency evacuation drills at Taipei 101, Ko yesterday changed his tone and said he would have officials reason with these people, but if they protest “very irrationally,” he would start dealing with them via legal channels.
He said that given that a majority of Taipei residents live in alleys, the traffic improvement plan, which addresses traffic flows in alleys, should be given a higher level of importance than projects to alleviate traffic on central arteries.
“This is what will truly make a difference to people’s lives,” Ko said.
Asked whether his plan to give out prize money to postgraduate students whose dissertations can produce useful analyses based on statistics compiled by the traffic department meant he was trying to cover up his administration’s failure to alleviate Taipei’s traffic congestion, Ko said it was aimed at encouraging people to utilize data published by the city government under the city’s open data policy.
Citing HackNTU, a “hackathon” organized by National Taiwan University to encourage students to contribute to improving government policies, Ko said the city government would follow the event’s direction to encourage academics to make meaningful use of its data.
Asked if the plan would hurt the morale of department officials, given that the department had already contracted private firms to conduct research on Taipei’s traffic, Ko said the two projects to outsource research are not mutually exclusive.
He said the city government would publish more data regarding its disaster readiness and traffic to tap into the public’s research capacity.
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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