Building a campaign around opposition to a person is a strange way to seek election, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
Ko was responding to questions by reporters about a parade in Taipei on Sunday, initiated by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智), who is seeking the party’s nomination to run for Taipei mayor in the Nov. 24 election.
The march was also billed as a gathering of “Ko-haters.”
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“You can put forward many political views, but using opposition against a person as a political platform is a strange thing,” Ko said.
There are still seven months until the nine-in-one election, so many issues can be resolved by putting in more efforts in the interim, Ko said, adding that he is striving every day to achieve his goals.
When asked about an opinion poll that indicated he lost 15 percent of public support after he canceled the city government’s annual Double Ninth Festival cash subsidy to elderly residents in 2015, he said: “Some things must be done.”
Ko said if the election were held three years ago, when he enforced the policy of paying for roadside parking, the election results would have been tragic, but he is confident that people would support his parking rule if it were put to a referendum now.
“Some policies will draw a backlash at the beginning, but people will recognize the idea behind the policy in the long run,” he said. “Some policies must be bravely enforced.”
In a question-and-answer session with members of the Taiwan Junior Chamber Taipei on Sunday, Ko also gave examples of policies in other countries that took decades to see successful results, such as Amsterdam, which took 40 years to transform it into a bicycle-friendly city, and Singapore, which took 28 years to embrace an English-based bilingual education system.
Ko added that at times, he had been advised against enforcing some plans because this is an election year, but he believes that right policies should be enforced now in the hope that they would help solve problems bit by bit, even if the public could not immediately feel their effects.
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