The Taipei City Government’s lack of effort in inviting foreign guests to attend the Taipei International Flora Expo attracted concern from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that the international event would turn into little more than a domestic show with little in the way of international achievements to speak of.
The city government aimed at raising Taipei City’s international profile through the expo, which is slated to run from Nov. 6 to April 25 next year. Information provided by the expo organizing committee, however, shows only five foreign guests will attend the event.
“How is the expo an international event if no foreign guests will attend and support the event? The city government vowed to promote the local horticultural industry to the international community via the expo, but it looks like the event will end up being a personal campaign for the mayor,” DPP Taipei City Councilor Wu Su-yao (吳思瑤) said at the Taipei City Council.
Wu blasted the city government and the expo’s organizing committee for its sloppy handling of the event’s international promotion. The organizing committee began the preparatory work on the expo last year, but did not send out invitations to participating nations, allies and sister cities for the opening ceremony until July 10.
So far only five guests from Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines have accepted the invitations and agreed to attend the expo’s opening ceremony. No representatives from the city’s 50 sister cities have yet agreed to attend the opening ceremony.
“The city government devoted all efforts on domestic promotion and used the expo as a vehicle to help with the re-election of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌). Apparently the Hau team did not care about international promotion because even our sister cities showed little interest in supporting the event,” she said.
Wang San-chung (王三中), chief secretary of the city’s Department of Economic Development, acknowledged its slow start in foreign invitations as the department was still in the process of printing formal invitations.
Wang said the department would send over 200 invitations to participating nations, expo members and diplomatic allies by the end of this month.
The department continued to speak with its foreign friends and confirm their attendance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would also assist the department and invite foreign guests, he said.
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