Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is also Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) chairman, yesterday said that TPP Legislator Tsai Pi-ru’s (蔡壁如) resignation on Friday would not affect the party’s election campaigns.
Takming University of Science and Technology on Thursday revoked Tsai’s master’s degree after its research ethics committee determined that her thesis included plagiarized material.
Tsai on Friday announced her resignation on Facebook, with the title “in pursuit of Taiwan’s justice and innocence.”
Photo: CNA
She resigned to be politically and publicly responsible, not because there are flaws in her thesis, Tsai wrote.
She said she would ask the university to respond with a report detailing the specific flaws in her thesis, and would appeal the case to the Ministry of Education, Tsai wrote.
Ko said that he has known Tsai for 30 years and she is “a diligent and responsible person who has guts.”
Her resignation is unlikely to affect the TPP’s election campaigns, as it was dealt with swiftly and responsibly, he said.
The party’s members are young and well-educated, rational intellectuals, he added.
The TPP, including Ko and Tsai, had strongly criticized former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), who was running for Taoyuan mayor as a Democratic Progressive Party candidate when he was accused of plagiarism, which led to his exit from the race during the summer.
There was speculation that Tsai was forced to resign by TPP members to prevent accusations of hypocrisy.
Ko said that Tsai received an e-mail from the university on Thursday informing her that her master’s degree had been revoked, and he met with her in the evening to clarify the situation.
Tsai had asked if she should resign immediately, but he told her that she should wait until she receives a review, Ko said, adding that even after contacting the university, Tsai had not received a review by Friday evening.
Ko said that in a telephone call with Tsai that evening, he told her: “If the review is not out yet, you can stop the bleeding by resigning and seek relief later.”
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