Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday rejected a rumor that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) would choose him as a running mate for next year’s presidential election after Chinese-language media on Saturday reported that Tsai had asked Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) to discuss the possibility with Ko.
Chen later on Saturday rejected the report, while Taipei City Government adviser Tsai Pi-ju (蔡壁如) also denied the report.
“Rumors will only be stopped by the wise; I hear strange rumors every day,” Ko told reporters yesterday.
Photo: CNA
Although Chen’s son works for the Taipei City Government, he has not met with Chen recently and does not know where the rumor came from, Ko said.
“I am doing a good job as Taipei mayor, so I should remain as mayor,” Ko said.
“Frankly speaking, the post of vice president is only a standby position. I can do more as Taipei mayor,” he said.
When asked if his remarks meant that he would not run for president, Ko said he feels “free and at ease, and can come and go as he wants,” so “if everyone is doing their job properly, then they should continue doing so, but if not, then we will see about” a presidential bid.
When asked about Hon Hai Precision Industry Co chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘), who is nearly 70, seeking the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nomination and whether his age was a factor, Ko said that mental age is more important than physical age.
There are many differences between running a corporation and a government, Ko said.
There are many obstructions to implementing government policies, Ko said.
Unlike in business, where leaders can fire employees as they wish, public servants have the “iron rice bowl” (鐵飯碗) — an idiom that refers to an occupation with guaranteed job security — so the head of the government has to lead like a religious master, trying to persuade them, he said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching