Taipei city councilors yesterday berated Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) for allowing EasyCard Corp (悠遊卡) chairman Tai Chi-chuan (戴季全) to be demoted over controversial EasyCards featuring a Japanese adult film actress, saying that Tai should have been fired.
The city councilors also questioned Ko’s intention to allocate NT$1.5 billion (US$45.8 million) to the city’s second reserve fund and demanded that the city government retract its budget proposal.
Shortly before the council session started, the city government announced that Tai had been replaced by EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co (悠遊卡投資控股) chairman Kenneth Lin (林向愷), who now doubles as EasyCard Corp’s chairman, and that Tai had been demoted to EasyCard Corp general manager.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ko said the demotion was a result of consultations with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC, 台北捷運公司) chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) and Lin, adding that Lin doubling as EasyCorp chairman would prevent additional expenditures, as Lin can only be paid one salary.
Taipei City Councilor Lee Yan-hsiu (李彥秀) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) criticized what she called Ko’s double standards for his subordinates, saying that he was strict with city officials and had driven away some of them, but when Tai, who she said was Ko’s “protege,” made a mistake and sparked a major controversy, Ko simply made him write a report.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) said that although Tai had been demoted, his monthly NT$250,000 salary would remain unchanged.
The ostensible punishment was not only an insult to the public’s intelligence, but also a ploy to elude scrutiny from the media, she said.
Citing balance sheets issued by the city’s Department of Finance, Chin also said that the city government had used only NT$17.9 million of its second reserve fund, which accounts for just 1.89 percent of the amount proposed by Ko, adding that the mayor had planned the budget in a dishonest manner.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Chen Chung-wen (陳重文) said the proposed budget for the reserve fund is excessive and NT$550 million more than what Ko’s predecessor, Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of the KMT, had budgeted.
He warned Ko not to use the fund as a private treasury to carry out illegal dealings.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Legislator Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) presented Ko with a copy of The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen as a reminder to the mayor that he should not let the media and the public’s idolatry blind him.
“I urge you to read it. Forget about approval, step out of the limelight and be the ‘Ko P’ [Ko’s popular nickname] Taipei residents wanted in the first place,” Wang said.
Wang’s remarks earned him a round of applause from both his pan-green and pan-blue camp colleagues.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Tung Chung-yan (童仲彥), regarding 2,500 EasyCards featuring images of Japanese adult film actress Yui Hatano reserved for public relations uses, asked for his colleagues who had received the cards to return them and stop being hypocrites.
His request was met with protests from some city councilors.
The city council resolved that EasyCard Corp would be required to release a roster of all corporations, city councilors and city government officials who received the cards by 11am today.
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