Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he did not know all the Taipei city councilors who signed his “Professor Ko approval card,” which he requires candidates to sign to take photographs with him at election campaign events.
Ko last month issued the card on Facebook, saying it symbolized a declaration of 16 political values that he promises to uphold and councilor candidates must sign it if they wish to be photographed with him.
While Ko was inspecting the Taipei International Coffee Festival held at National Taiwan University yesterday, reporters asked him to give details about several city councilor candidates who have been spotted following Ko and posing for group photographs with him at campaign events.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“Popularity is still very important in plurality voting,” he said, adding that he sometimes joked that “Ko haters” and “Ko fans” would all win the election, while those with less distinct stances were more likely to lose.
Asked about a planned campaign event for candidates who signed the card, Ko said that his campaign office is arranging the details and he actually did not personally know everyone who had signed the card.
“Frankly speaking, it is impossible for the [mayoral] candidate to get to know everyone… I spend most of my time being mayor,” Ko said. “So the card should not be seen as an endorsement, but as a means to promote political values and beliefs.”
The mayor was also asked how he planned to work with and support councilor candidates whom he hardly knows, such as independent candidate Chang Kai-chun (張凱鈞), who signed the card, but was last week accused of involvement in fraud.
He said he has asked Taipei Department of Civil Affairs director Lan Shih-tsung (藍世聰), Taipei deputy mayors Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) and Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻), and his campaign director to form a dedicated team to screen councilor hopefuls.
Ko’s campaign office was still confirming which candidates had signed the approval card and who would attend the event, it said yesterday.
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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