Former Taipei deputy mayor Allen Chiu (邱文祥) yesterday announced his intention to run as an independent candidate in the Taipei mayoral election in November.
Chiu, a urologist-turned-politician who has also served as Taipei Department of Health commissioner and superintendent of the Taipei City Hospital, at noon released a two-minute video on Facebook to introduce himself as “an independent candidate running for Taipei mayor.”
As a doctor who was born and raised in the city, many city councilors and patients have trusted him and urged him to “save Taipei,” because the city government has stalled in the past few years and many department heads have left the administration, he said.
Photo: CNA
“I want to run for Taipei mayor, because I think I can do better than my classmate, [Taipei Mayor] Ko Wen-je (柯文哲),” Chiu said, referring to their shared profession.
Chiu said he is to host a Facebook live broadcast three days a week starting on April 10, in which he would discuss his ideas about governance and invite specialists to share their medical knowledge.
Chiu held a news conference in the afternoon yesterday to reaffirm his announcement.
He criticized Ko’s administration for what he called its inability to handle the Taipei Dome construction project, saying: “We are both surgeons, so opening up an abdomen and not dealing with it for three days is illogical.”
Tearing down the dome would be more dangerous than building it, because it might collapse, but completing the project could create 5,000 to 10,000 jobs and enable Taipei to host a baseball team, he said.
“The mayor does not work by himself, but needs the ability to cooperate with a team of like-minded people to improve municipal administration,” Chiu said, criticizing Ko for failing to retain his department heads.
He listed 12 political goals, including completing the Taipei Dome project according to international safety standards, revitalizing old communities, improving traffic in Neihu District (內湖), completing construction of the Taipei Performing Arts Center, improving minority care resources and resuming annual government subsidies for elderly people.
Asked whether he would cooperate with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), since he served under former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), Chiu said that Taipei is his hometown and that he has friends from the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
That is why he would run as an independent, Chiu added.
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