Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) plans to set off on a 365km one-day cycling trip from Taipei to Kaohsiung this morning, his last long-distance bike trip as Taipei mayor. However, his intentions are questionable.
Departing from Taipei’s Guandu Temple (關渡宮) at 6am and ending at Kaohsiung Municipal Dayi Junior High School in the early hours of tomorrow, the mayor is expected to complete the challenging trip in about 21 hours.
Ko completed his first Feb. 28 one-day cycling trip south in 2016 — the 520km “twin-tower” trip from Fuguijiao Lighthouse (富貴角燈塔) in Keelung to Oluanpi Lighthouse (鵝鑾鼻燈塔) in Pingtung County.
Ko, the grandson of a 228 Incident victim, at the time said the trip was meant to “seek redemption for the soul with physical undertaking” and “open up a future of tolerance and forgiveness with sweat,” replacing “tears filled with rancor and hate.”
In the following years, he set off on one-day Taipei-to-Kaohsiung cycling trips on Feb. 28 three times — in 2017, 2019 and last year — but each was interrupted as he returned to Taipei to attend an annual 228 Incident commemoration event, finishing the final leg later in the day, drawing criticism for showmanship.
The Taipei Department of Sports allocated a budget of more than NT$700,000 for the cycling event last year, a large portion of which was used for a live online broadcast of the journey. The poor quality of the video was criticized by many people, including the mayor himself. City councilors questioned whether Ko was using municipal funds for personal publicity, but the city government said that the event promoted the cycling industry and fitness through sport.
Ko’s trip this year was organized by the Taipei Municipal Athletics Federation’s cycling association, perhaps to avoid similar criticism, although it nonetheless received a NT$500,000 subsidy from the Taipei sports department.
Many members of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), of which Ko is chairman, plan to greet the mayor at five rest stations. Independent Taipei City Councilor Lin Ying-meng (林穎孟) has questioned whether the event is being used for election campaign purposes.
TPP spokeswoman Yang Bao-zheng (楊寶楨) denied it, saying that Ko’s supporters are free to cheer for him and greet him regardless of where he is or what he is doing.
However, Lin on Friday produced internal TPP correspondence allegedly written by the party’s election task force convener, Legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如), discussing the party’s strategy for November’s local elections. The five rest stations are mentioned as places for candidates, officials and party members to greet their chairman.
The TPP also launched a social media campaign on Wednesday, asking its supporters to upload a photograph of themselves riding a bicycle and use one of the campaign’s three hashtags. The party’s five legislators and two spokespersons have echoed the call.
The TPP yesterday denied Lin’s speculation, saying that the cycling trip was not organized by the party, nor is it a publicity campaign, and that Ko signed up as a private cycling enthusiast. Ko has asked supporters to not hold TPP banners, chant campaign slogans or take personal photos with him, the party said.
Despite these claims, the cycling event uses the name “Do the Ride Thing,” seemingly a wordplay on “Do the Right Thing, Do Things Right” — Ko’s mayoral re-election campaign song in 2018. The event, as with his cycling trips in 2019 and last year, is not being promoted by the Taipei sports department nor by officials on social media, but rather enthusiastically endorsed by TPP members.
It only seems natural for people to question Ko’s intentions for his final 228 cycling trip as mayor.
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