DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan (
Lee demand that Ma take responsibility for increasing Ecstasy use in nightclubs, a thriving sex industry and scandals involving the city's police.
Lee was speaking following the release on bail on Wednesday of two police officers from the city's Chungshan precinct and three nightclub owners who were suspected of obstructing a police crackdown on Ecstasy use.
Saying that the high number of cases reported to the police did not necessarily equate to the force's effectiveness, Lee asked Ma to stop playing numbers games with the public to try to persuade them that the city's crime rate was decreasing.
During President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) time as mayor, Lee said, the number of reported cases of crimes related to the sex trade or drugs was about 334 a year. "But under Ma, the number has risen to about 597, almost twice as many as under Chen," he said.
Lee said such statistics belied Ma's claimed success in cracking down on the city's sex industry.
Young people have suffered as a result of Ma's failure to maintain public order, Lee said, saying many took Ecstasy in pubs, an act that not only ruined their health but also led to their involvement in other criminal activities, such as prostitution.
"Ma's style of governing emphasizes the superficial but lacks actual determination," Lee said. "Every issue that concerns the city's public order remains untackled, leaving many city residents shaking their heads and worrying about the future of the youngsters."
Lee also criticized the mayor's priorities in demanding money from the central government for flood prevention after spending money on projects for the city that he said weren't urgent.
Ma has spent NT$4 billion on upgrading the city's sidewalks, Lee said, when the money could have been spent on the dredging of tributaries of the Keelung River, for which the mayor is asking the government to pay NT$1.98 billion.
On Wednesday, the Legislature Yuan approved a special budget for flood-control measures along the Keelung River, but excluded Ma's request.
"If I were him, I would have used NT$2 billion for flood prevention and the other NT$2 billion for renovating the sidewalks," Lee said.
In response to Lee's criticism, Ma said his record on public order was better than that of Chen.
"In comparison to Chen's public approval ratings, which were often less than 50 percent on the issue of public order, mine have been in the range of between 50 and 60 percent," Ma said.
Ma also said faulted Lee's logic regarding the city's flood-prevention proposals.
"While we were working on renovating the city's sidewalks, how could we know in advance what was going to happen with regard to the proposal in the Legislative Yuan?" Ma said.
"Besides, we have already come up with NT$10.8 billion to dredge the Keelung River."
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS