Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) campaign held its first large-scale public event in Qixing Park (七星公園) in Beitou District (北投) yesterday, but the municipality fined Ko’s campaign office for illegally parking his “mobile campaign headquarters” — a stage truck — in the park.
The event was described as a “fun fair,” after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Pasuya Yao (姚文智) protested that the Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office had rejected their applications to hold campaign events in public parks.
The parks office gave the campaign a ticket at 9am when the stage truck drove into the park to prepare the main stage for the afternoon event and continued issuing fines every two hours until the event ended in the evening, for a total fine of NT$14,400.
Photo: CNA
“Ko values the key principles of ‘respect professionals, perform administrative duties according to the law, and be open and transparent,’ so the campaign office will respect the office’s penalties and pay the fines according to the law,” Ko campaign spokesman Tsai Chun-wei (蔡峻維) said.
Asked to comment upon his arrival to the park at about 4pm, Ko said he was astonished, as the campaign office had applied for permission in advance and thought it was acting legally.
If the truck is determined to have parked illegally, the campaign would make improvements and find a legal place to park the truck next time, he said.
Although Ko in his speech urged attendees not to wear campaign vests, hold campaign flags or chant dong suan (凍蒜, “get elected” in Hoklo, commonly known as Taiwanese), the parks office later nevertheless deemed the event an “election campaign event,” which means it violated municipal rules for venue use.
Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters director Lin Chao-chia (林晁嘉) said that the parks office would confiscate the NT$30,000 paid as guarantee, as Ko had repeatedly chanted his 2014 election campaign slogan during his public speech.
Ko said he still held on to his 2014 campaign slogan that “changing Taiwan begins in the capital, and changing Taipei begins with culture,” and saw the election process as a cultural-social movement aimed at changing political culture in Taiwan.
He also cited data while giving examples of his administrative performance over nearly four years and thanked his supporters for giving him the courage to continue doing what he believes is good for the public.
The “fun fair” began at 1pm, with performances by Beitou local groups, speeches by municipal officials, city councilors and Ko’s parents, and more than a dozen booths selling handicraft items and snacks lining the park.
Ko’s campaign estimated that about 3,000 people were in attendance at about 3:30pm and approximately 5,000 attended the event in total.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
INTIMIDATION: In addition to the likely military drills near Taiwan, China has also been waging a disinformation campaign to sow division between Taiwan and the US Beijing is poised to encircle Taiwan proper in military exercise “Joint Sword-2024C,” starting today or tomorrow, as President William Lai (賴清德) returns from his visit to diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a national security official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said that multiple intelligence sources showed that China is “highly likely” to launch new drills around Taiwan. Although the drills’ scale is unknown, there is little doubt that they are part of the military activities China initiated before Lai’s departure, they said. Beijing at the same time is conducting information warfare by fanning skepticism of the US and
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
RSS