Taipei city councilors across party lines yesterday found common cause in boycotting Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) report to the Taipei City Council.
The councilors took turns raising procedural motions and presenting the mayor with small props for more than an hour before Ko was finally allowed to deliver his report.
Their questions mostly focused on a several controversies, including whether Ko had sent a draft speech for the Taipei-Shanghai City Forum in July to the National Security Council ahead of time, rumors that Ko said city workers had resigned “because there were no profits to make anymore” and the discovery of fipronil-tainted eggs on sale in the city.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ko acts as if he is a deity that should be worshipped, but he is just gentle and gives in when facing China, although he acts tough when attacking pan-green and pan-blue parties, Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) said as he presented the mayor with a small incense burner.
“I want to remind you that you should get rid of the incense burner and step down from the altar because you are human, not a deity,” Wang said. “You are the mayor of Taipei.”
A Mainland Affairs Council press release issued after the Shanghai forum voiced dissatisfaction with remarks made by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), not Ko’s, so the mayor should stop playing the victim and focus on city policies, not cross-strait relations, Wang said.
Several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) city councilors carried eggs and signs that read “Taipei refuses poisonous eggs” and “Mayor Ko, why do only Taipei residents get to eat poisonous eggs?” as they surrounded Ko’s seat in the council room, peppering him with questions about fipronil-tainted eggs.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) questioned why the city government did not inform the public that tainted eggs had been found in the city until Monday, when it learned about them on Thursday last week.
The city was not taking its residents’ health seriously, Wang Hung-wei said.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Wu Shih-cheng (吳世正) and several colleagues urged Ko to apologize to his administrative team and city workers for saying that they were only working to benefit themselves, especially to former Taipei City Government secretary-general Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), who had worked long and hard so the city could successfully host the recent Universiade.
Political commentator Huang Yueh-hung (黃越宏) recently said on a television program that Ko had once said about the number of people resigning from the city government that “those people found out they have nothing to gain.”
Some people have wondered if Ko was referring to Su, who had served as Universiade organizing committee chief executive officer.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
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