The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday urged the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to refrain from an unnecessary war of words, as the party sought to assuage controversy over KMT Secretary-General Mo Tien-hu’s (莫天虎) no-show at a party event for post-typhoon reconstruction workers in Taitung City.
“The DPP’s criticism is inappropriate. We did not arrange for Mo to pay his respects to reconstruction workers in Taitung City when we finalized his itinerary on Saturday,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee director Chow Chi-wai (周志偉) said at KMT headquarters in Taipei.
Chow said the visit to the cleanup squads and reconstruction workers on Taitung’s Nanjing Road was suggested by staff at the KMT’s Taitung County branch on the spur of the moment, after they spotted the workers when they were on their way to greet Mo at Taitung Airport on Sunday morning.
Employees of the local branch took it upon themselves to add the event to Mo’s itinerary and notify the press at 8:20am on Sunday, before canceling it at 8:28am after learning that the relief workers were to leave for their reconstruction missions, Chow said.
“Mo, whose plane arrived in Taitung at 8:40am, was unaware of the extra event the entire time,” Chow added.
Describing Mo’s no-show as a “beautiful and unintended mistake,” Chow said the KMT would adjust the party’s internal operations to prevent a recurrence.
Chow made the remarks a day after DPP spokesman Wang Min-sheng (王閔生), who doubles as a Taipei city councilor, accused Mo on Facebook on Sunday evening of bailing out on hundreds of workers and keeping them waiting.
“All those workers and heavy vehicle drivers who traveled all the way from other cities and counties to join reconstruction missions in Taitung had to put their work on hold just because the secretary-general of a political party was late,” Wang wrote.
Accusing Mo of wasting social resources, Wang said Mo and KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) should apologize.
According to government statistics, overall losses in Taitung — the administrative region most severly damaged by Typhoon Nepartak on Friday and Saturday last week — amounted to about NT$2 billion (US$62.1 million), with agricultural losses surpassing NT$600 million.
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