Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that he is not criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to gain votes for his Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Jan. 11 elections, but because he believes there is a standard for what is right.
The existence of “third force” parties means that the two major parties are not doing a good job, added Ko, who is also the founder and chairman of the TPP.
He made the remarks in response to media queries about why he often criticizes Presidential Office Secretary-General and former Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the DPP, and whether criticizing the pan-blue and pan-green camps is part of his election strategy.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
On Friday, Ko said that one of the reasons Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, “escaped” from Kaohsiung to run for president was because of the high public debt left by Chen’s administration.
Han on Sunday said that Kaohsiung has the most difficult financial situation in Taiwan, so he is grateful to Ko for always speaking up for him.
Ko yesterday said that Chen should explain how the debt was created and how it affects the city’s administration.
DPP Legislator Chung Kung-chao (鍾孔炤), a former Kaohsiung Labor Affairs Bureau director, on Sunday posted two charts on Facebook explaining how Chen was forced to self-finance several infrastructure development projects, as the then-KMT-led central government did not provide enough funding.
He wrote that Chen repaid more debt than the debt created during her term as mayor, so the high debt was caused by the then-KMT-led central government failing to keep its funding promises.
The city government led by Han has increased public debt by NT$6.4 billion (US$211.5 million) this year, he added.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
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A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
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