Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday reaffirmed his good relationship with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after only one DPP Taipei city councilor attended a Lunar New Year greeting event in the morning.
As officials returned to work yesterday, Ko attended the routine event at the Taipei City Council.
“The council has helped the city government a lot over the past three years, and the councilors’ supervision is a reminder for the government to make improvements,” Ko said, adding that city councilors know what Taipei’s residents need more than the government does, so he has asked all departments to take the councilors’ criticism as suggestions for improvement.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“We will this year continue to maintain this attitude, to consider the councilors’ suggestions and realize them,” Ko said. “They are the source of information for the city government’s improvement.”
However, as Taipei City Councilor Wang Wei-chung (王威中) was the only DPP councilor to attend the event this year, Ko was asked whether it reflected his relationship with the party.
“Maybe everyone is still enjoying the holiday,” Ko said. “I think some might still be on vacation in other nations ... and really good friends tend to not meet each other on public occasions.”
Asked again whether he is on good terms with the DPP, he said: “Very good.”
Asked about negative comments on a Lunar New Year’s greeting video featuring Ko and DPP Taipei City Councilor Lin Shih-tsung (林世宗) posted on Facebook last week, Ko said there is still a long way to go before the elections, and usually only people with opposing views will leave comments.
Asked whether he thinks the DPP and pan-green supporters would eventually appear and whether he discussed the issue with DPP Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福) over the holiday, the mayor said that integration takes time and that he has not spoken with Hung about it over the past five days, but might later.
Asked about the Taipei mayoral election, Hung said there are many possibilities in politics and that the DPP does not have to limit itself to the idea of cooperating with Ko.
“Of course, I cannot tell you,” Hung said, when asked about alternatives.
As Ko had made a remark about “choosing the lesser of two evils,” referring to cooperating with the DPP this year, Hung said the choice should be between “the better of two good options.”
Imagination is needed in politics so that innovative models can be created, such as an earlier “coalition of opposition parties,” Hung said.
DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) is a hardworking person and has always had progressive and constructive ideas that could benefit the city’s overall development, he added.
Additional reporting by Su Fang-ho
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS