Taipei mayoral aspirant Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) appeal for pan-blue camp support and his comment that People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) might have been a better president if he was elected in 2000 drew a backlash from one of his rivals yesterday.
Ko, an independent who has been trying to secure the pan-green camp’s support for December’s election, on Saturday reached out to the the pan-blue camp in a visit to the Taiwan Hope Engineering Association, a subsidiary group of the PFP.
The National Taiwan University Hospital physician, a self-proclaimed staunch supporter of Taiwanese independence and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was quoted as saying that while he had voted for Chen in the 2000 presidential election, “looking back, Taiwan might have been a better place if Soong was elected.”
Ko also urged PFP members to put their hatred against the imprisoned and seriously ill Chen to rest and to try “forgiving their enemies” because Chen deserved to be placed in house arrest.
However, Ko’s comments appeared to have antagonized pan-green supporters, with netizens blasting him on Facebook and online forums for fawning on the blue-camp and ignoring what the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration achieved while it was in power.
“I believe that a candidate should not be a bat,” Wellington Koo (顧立雄), a lawyer who is among the four DPP members trailing Ko for support from the pan-green camp for a mayoral run, wrote on Facebook yesterday, apparently a reference to a story from Aesop’s Fables.
The story depicts a bat, whose strategy in a battle between the birds and the beasts was to claim that it was a bird while the birds were at an advantage and to say it was a beast when the beasts were ahead.
“What I do know is that if [President] Ma Ying-jeou [馬英九] had not been elected in 2008, the people of Taiwan would be enjoying better lives now,” Koo said.
Koo, Ko and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) are engaged in a fierce competition to win the nomination as the pan-green candidate, but Koo and Lu seem to be having a hard time catching up with Ko’s popularity.
The physician said he would officially launch his campaign on Feb. 17 and would define the election as a battle between ordinary people like himself and second-generation princelings of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), including former Taipei EasyCard Co chairman Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰).
Aside from Lien and five pan-green aspirants, candidates in the Taipei mayoral election could include award-winning writer Neil Peng (馮光遠) and former DPP lawmaker Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄), who have expressed interest in running for the post.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
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