Kaohsiung’s public institutions are not required to use an emblem bearing the likeness of Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on printed materials, the Kaohsiung City Government said yesterday.
The city government was responding after public schools on Friday received a notice from the city government saying that the emblem should be used whenever referencing the mayor in event materials, but officials later in the day backtracked, saying that they simply hoped that institutions referencing the mayor would use the emblem for uniformity.
Civil servants said they were “startled” by the notice, and criticized Han for what they called “self-deification.”
Photo: Ko Yu-hao, Taipei Times
Some city agencies asked whether performance evaluations would suffer if they failed to use the emblem.
While the city was “not enforcing its use,” institutions using the emblem could do so without charge, the city’s Bureau of Information said.
The emblem — a cartoon likeness of Han holding a cabbage and accompanied by a small dog — was sent to all city institutions so that they could use the same representation of the mayor in documents, the bureau said.
The emblem also caused confusion for legal reasons, as Han has applied to trademark the likeness.
The city has called for civil servants to use the emblem, but Han’s permission would be needed to legally use it, one Kaohsiung public-school teacher said on condition of anonymity.
“If we don’t use it, will it affect our evaluations — or our chances for a promotion?” the teacher said, adding that colleagues were concerned that the city government lacked political neutrality.
The emblem was designed because city institutions had been using various likenesses of the mayor, which led to “disorder,” the bureau said.
The city government was not requiring the emblem to be used for every event, but if any representation of the mayor was to be used, it should be the one provided, the bureau said, adding that even after the trademark was registered, the emblem could be used without charge by public institutions.
Kaohsiung Education Bureau Director Wu Jung-feng (吳榕峰) said that when he used Han’s likeness on products for this year’s National Middle School Athletic Games, he needed to have them reviewed by the city council.
Wanting to spare other school administrations the hassle, he forwarded them the letter of permission that he had received from the Bureau of Information, he said, adding that he asked the city government to better explain its policies.
The Bureau of Information said that having all public institutions use the same emblem would be more aesthetically pleasing.
It urged the public “not to maliciously twist the facts and attack” the bureau.
Additional reporting by Ko Yu-hao
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