The Clean Government Commission set up by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is a tool for Ko to foment a “Cultural Revolution,” former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said yesterday.
Lo said that while the commission has the stated aim of exposing graft in a number of development projects in Taipei, “except for a few people who have been recruited to ‘embellish’ the team, such as former minister of health Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良), the political bias of the majority of commission members is obvious.”
“[Former independent Taipei mayoral candidate] Neil Peng (馮光遠), for example, who just days ago held a press conference calling President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) ‘drowning dogs’ and calling for ‘the destruction of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the shortest possible time,’ is one of the members. How much objectivity can we expect from him?” Lo said on Facebook.
“Everybody would love to see the city government carry out an anticorruption campaign without political bias, and I personally believe Hau could weather the storm. However, judging from the makeup of the commission, there is no need to wait until April for it to reach its conclusions, as its findings are foreseeable in Peng’s attitude,” Lo said.
Lo said that Ko had “put politics above the judiciary” and “assumed conclusions before finding evidence,” which he described as “dictatorial justice” that would “damage and destroy the stability of Taiwan’s democratic politics.”
Saying he wanted to remind Ko that Taiwan is a democratic nation governed by the rule of law, Lo said Ko’s logic of “Cultural Revolution-like political struggle” would shatter in a day the democracy that Taiwan had struggled for decades to achieve.
“Don’t turn a change of administration into a Cultural Revolution,” Lo said.
Hau said yesterday that Ko has little understanding of municipal administration and has been “trampling on the efforts of his forerunners.”
Hau was responding to Ko’s remark, made on a television talk show, that an attack on him by Hau had only betrayed his “guilt.”
Emphasizing that the development projects in question have all been examined by the Taipei Prosecutors’ Office and the Control Yuan, Hau said he believes the projects would stand up to inspections.
Exiled Chinese democracy activist Wang Dan (王丹) mocked Lo’s reference to the Cultural Revolution, saying that there has been “an uncanny trend” in recent years of “accusing others of sparking a Cultural Revolution while knowing absolutely nothing about the revolution.”
“It’s not that I look down on you, Lo Chih-chiang, but do you know exactly when the Cultural Revolution started and which document it was sparked by? Do you know who the members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group were? Do you know what the revolution was really about?” Wang added.
While netizens supporting Lo echoed his comments by dubbing the city government agency the “smearing commission,” formed to take down the KMT, a netizen surnamed Huang (黃) said that before the election the KMT had used all party and state apparatuses to “examine” Ko.
“How guilty does he have to be for him to whine about an inspection that has just started?” the netizen said.
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