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.
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