CHANGING SIDES?Netizens said Ko Wen-je should not pander to the pan-blue camp nor ignore the things the Democratic Progressive Party had achieved while in power
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Taipei mayoral aspirant Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) appeal for pan-blue camp support and his comment that People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) might have been a better president if he was elected in 2000 drew a backlash from one of his rivals yesterday.
Ko, an independent who has been trying to secure the pan-green camp’s support for December’s election, on Saturday reached out to the the pan-blue camp in a visit to the Taiwan Hope Engineering Association, a subsidiary group of the PFP.
The National Taiwan University Hospital physician, a self-proclaimed staunch supporter of Taiwanese independence and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was quoted as saying that while he had voted for Chen in the 2000 presidential election, “looking back, Taiwan might have been a better place if Soong was elected.”
Ko also urged PFP members to put their hatred against the imprisoned and seriously ill Chen to rest and to try “forgiving their enemies” because Chen deserved to be placed in house arrest.
However, Ko’s comments appeared to have antagonized pan-green supporters, with netizens blasting him on Facebook and online forums for fawning on the blue-camp and ignoring what the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration achieved while it was in power.
“I believe that a candidate should not be a bat,” Wellington Koo (顧立雄), a lawyer who is among the four DPP members trailing Ko for support from the pan-green camp for a mayoral run, wrote on Facebook yesterday, apparently a reference to a story from Aesop’s Fables.
The story depicts a bat, whose strategy in a battle between the birds and the beasts was to claim that it was a bird while the birds were at an advantage and to say it was a beast when the beasts were ahead.
“What I do know is that if [President] Ma Ying-jeou [馬英九] had not been elected in 2008, the people of Taiwan would be enjoying better lives now,” Koo said.
Koo, Ko and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) are engaged in a fierce competition to win the nomination as the pan-green candidate, but Koo and Lu seem to be having a hard time catching up with Ko’s popularity.
The physician said he would officially launch his campaign on Feb. 17 and would define the election as a battle between ordinary people like himself and second-generation princelings of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), including former Taipei EasyCard Co chairman Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰).
Aside from Lien and five pan-green aspirants, candidates in the Taipei mayoral election could include award-winning writer Neil Peng (馮光遠) and former DPP lawmaker Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄), who have expressed interest in running for the post.