Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma said Taipei was an international city where opinions could be freely expressed and the broad-minded public could take criticism.
On Thursday, Lee described Taipei as "the source of chaos [in Taiwan], for it is the major stronghold of an alien power where the old force is strongly rooted."
While meeting with 13 law-makers-elect from the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), Lee said that it was fair for people to consider the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪) or the Tatu River (大肚溪), two rivers in central Taiwan, as a dividing line in political terms.
In Taiwan, ethnic groups have tended to settle in different areas. Mainland Chinese and Hakka are predominantly found in the north, whereas most ethnic Tai-wanese, frequently supporters of the DPP or TSU, dominate in the south.
In the Dec. 1 elections for local governments chiefs, eight of 10 seats south of the Tatu River were won by DPP candidates. In the north, the KMT won six of the eight seats.
Lee said that the legislature should be moved to the south if it kept failing to reflect public opinion. He said that only by moving to the south "can those who are in violation of the mainstream opinion understand what the mainstream values are."
He also attacked lawmakers, Taipei City councilors and "has-been" politicians, saying they appeared frequently in the med-ia, which he said was primarily controlled by pro-unificationist interests.
"They seem to be the spokesmen of Taiwanese people, but who knows for whom they speak?"
But Lee said it would take a tremendous effort to eliminate "abnormality" from Taiwan's politics, economics and media. But moving the legislature to the south could help people to rethink the bias the government has toward northern Taiwan.
He also said it was unfair and unreasonable for Kaohsiung and Taipei cities to take the majority of funding from the central government as it accentuated the gap between rural and urban development.
"The Taipei City Government squanders too much money on fixing roads," said Lee, who was once mayor of Taipei.
Defending himself, Ma said that subsidies from the central government had been falling over the past few years
"How could the [city] government afford unnecessary road repairs when the city coffers have been depleted by the recession?" he said.
"The city -- which has been the country's hub of culture, politics and economics -- used to be pretty well-off, but that is no longer true."
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