Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that he hates political exchanges and has a shortcoming of sometimes being too idealistic, during a visit to Tainan with his wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪).
During a tour to a number of temples, where many local supporters asked for his autograph or to take a photograph with him, reporters asked what he thought of Taiwanese writer Chen Fang-ming’s (陳芳明) post on Facebook on Saturday that “Ko Wen-je is probably the only person who is capable of making his close [campaign] comrades into enemies.”
Ko said that he sometimes does not fit in with other Taiwanese politicians, as he holds different ideals.
Photo: Wang Chun-chung, Taipei Times
One of his shortcomings is his idealism, along with his dislike of superficial political exchanges and his unwillingness to compromise on some issues, he added.
He does not like how the government is trying to use up its annual budget through the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, setting deadlines for spending allocated funds on some projects that clearly cannot be finished by the designated time frame, which just wastes taxpayers’ money, he said.
In his Facebook post, titled “There are no forever friends in politics,” Chen wrote that he really understood what that phrase meant after reading that Ko said in an interview last week that he “harbors resentment” toward President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Ko received lot of help from the Democratic Progressive Party when he entered politics in 2014 as an independent, Chen wrote.
Amid almost unrelenting media questioning about whether he might run in next year’s presidential election, Ko has frequently said that he would make a decision next month.
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