Ko double standards?

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors have fixed their sights on “three big projects” that took place when Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was mayor of Taipei. The three projects are the Taiwan Intelligent Fiber Optic Consortium (Taifo), Core Pacific City shopping mall and Beitou Shilin Science Park.

Ko’s former spokeswoman Vicky Chen (陳智菡) says that the criticisms are no more than insinuations and called on KMT councilors not to back up their party’s Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), who succeeded Ko as mayor, to muddy the waters for the sake of attacking Chiang’s predecessor.

However, Chen should not forget that after Ko took office as mayor, he made a big show of establishing a Clean Government Committee. When Ko convened the first-ever meeting of the Taipei City Government’s Clean Government Committee on Jan. 29, 2015, he said that the purpose of the meeting was to set up case groups to investigate several projects that were the subject of public attention, namely the Farglory Taipei Dome development project, the Xindian Depot joint development project, the Taipei Twin Towers joint development project, Songshan Cultural Park and Syntrend Creative Park, so that the committee members could start their investigations as soon as possible.

Ko said at the time that the committee’s function was not just to detect fraud, but to prevent it and supervise the city’s governance. He said that the Taipei City Government would regularly report to the committee, thus using external oversight to make the city’s governance more transparent.

Seen from this perspective, why should KMT and DPP city councilors not raise doubts about the “three big projects?” Surely it cannot be that it is only OK for Ko and his team to make a big fanfare about investigating “five big projects,” but not for anyone else to investigate these “three big projects?” It really will not do for Ko and his TPP to have such blatant double standards.