Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he does not know what speculations about the pan-green camp cooperating with a “white force” in the Taipei legislative by-election nomination really mean.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) resigned from his post to run for Taipei mayor, leaving his seat in Taipei’s Shilin-Datong (士林-大同) constituency vacant.
The Central Election Commission has announced a legislative by-election for Jan. 27, with candidates able to apply until Friday.
Photo: CNA
While Ko has not revealed whether he would recommend someone for the seat, he last week said he had consulted with several people on the issue.
Several DPP legislators and city councilors have expressed conflicting views on whether they should join Ko in nominating a candidate, which would symbolize mended relations with Ko after not supporting him and even criticizing him in the Taipei mayoral race.
Local media have described a potential joint nomination as “pan-green-white cooperation.”
Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), Ko’s wife, on Sunday evening wrote on Facebook that she had been watching politicians and political pundits discussing on TV every night the possibility of “pan-green-white cooperation,” and that their remarks were “driving her crazy.”
“We were beaten up by them before the election, but after the election, they say: ‘just let it go and cooperate,’” she wrote. “What kind of thinking is this?”
Asked about Chen’s remarks, Ko said he had suggested that she not watch political talk shows so that she would not become upset and that he would continue to do so, while also encouraging her to write less on Facebook.
Asked whether the pan-green camp has approached him about cooperation in the by-election, Ko said he did know who in the pan-green camp has a say on the issue, nor did he understand what “pan-green-white cooperation” means, but he had heard that DPP members are still criticizing him on political talk shows every day.
The deadline for candidate applications is Friday, and anything is open for discussion until then, Ko added.
Local media yesterday reported that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Ko are to meet this week, and Ko yesterday said that Taipei City Government Secretary-General Chang Jer-Yang (張哲揚) has been instructed to prepare discussion topics, most of which are focused on municipal administration.
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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