Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in a Facebook post on Friday praised Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing (TAPM) general manager Wu Yin-ning (吳音寧).
TAPM is semi-governmental entity, with both the Council of Agriculture and Taipei City Government holding shares in the company.
Taipei city councilors have been highly concerned about TAPM-related incidents, including a decline in vegetable prices in early March, Wu’s decision to ship surplus vegetables to Changhua County for charity and an allegation that she gifted 60 bottles of wine to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Taipei chapter, Ko wrote on Friday evening.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“The nation should not be like this. I think accusations should be made with evidence,” Ko said.
He said he asked the supervisory board at TAPM, who represent the city government, to be “in charge of letting the facts speak for themselves and bringing everything to light for the public to examine.”
Ko said he was a political neophyte who finally secured his position, adding that he hopes Wu can remain steady in the face of political wrestling between the pan-blue and pan-green camps and bring her professionalism into full play to maintain a balance between various conflicting interests.
“Wu still needs to hone her political skills, but her personal ethics, experience with agricultural production sources and her passion for agricultural development in Taiwan deserve recognition,” he wrote.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) yesterday said he does not understand Ko’s actions, adding that Ko praised Wu on the one hand, while ordering city government officials to raid the company and investigate its accounting records on the other.
Wu is the “pork barrel” between Ko and the DPP, and as the barrel has been knocked over, there are now conflicts between the two sides, Ting added.
DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Pasuya Yao (姚文智) yesterday said that Ko’s team allegedly leaked many rumors to the KMT, watched as “scandals” evolved and even added insult to injury, only to step in as a mediator.
Asked about a rumor that the central government was considering asking Wu to resign, Yao said that DPP Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福) had denied the rumor, so people should stop spreading rumors about Wu.
When asked about Yao’s remark, Ko yesterday said that “when people requested that then-TAPM general manager Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) [of the KMT] be replaced, I did not think that I had skills mature enough to handle the situation — the DPP claimed that I was colluding with gangsters, while the KMT said I was the DPP’s partner.”
He only insisted that whoever took up the position be professional and able to get things done properly, he said.
Taipei’s political scene is full of sharks and predators, and can be harmful to white rabbits or wild rabbits from rural areas, he added.
Ko recently described Wu as a white rabbit that had strayed into the forest, an idea that she rejected, claiming that she was a wild rabbit from the countryside.
Ko said the DPP administration insisted on appointing Wu as TAPM general manager, so he agreed that if the DPP appointed Wu, the city government would appoint the chairman of the board.
He has tried to keep the situation stable and fair, he added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods