The ruling DPP yesterday closed its registration for prospective legislative candidates. It aims to nominate 80 candidates out of 146 registered hopefuls for the year-end legislative election.
A total of 117 legislative candidates, including 31 nominees registered for legislators at large (
DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"But there should be no problem for the DPP to hold onto its current 67 seats," Chen added.
Endorsing Chen's views, Chin Heng-wei (
"Anyone who wants to run [for public office] is inevitably supported by certain factions within the party. This does not help the party to increase its votes," Chin said. He therefore added that it would be a tough fight if the DPP were to win half of the 225 legislative seats.
Lee Yong-ping (李永萍), a former DPP member but now director of the People First Party's (PFP) legislative caucus, said that the DPP's prospective candidates were competitive since former members of the National Assembly, such as Liu I-te (劉一德), and incumbent government officials, including Lo Wen-chia (羅文嘉) and Hsiao Bikhim (蕭美琴) would all participate in the election. Most of them have the advantage of enjoying high popularity.
She suggested, however, that the election would be a strategically tricky one for DPP candidates.
"To avoid being connected with the DPP government's failures, candidates will have to show a degree of independence from the party. But at the same time, they will need to ally themselves with the party in order to take advantage of its resources," Lee said.
Lee said she believed that the candidates to be fielded by the DPP had good social images and were well-qualified to be members of the legislature. Still, she was not worried that the DPP would outshine the PFP in terms of election performance since "supporters of the DPP and the PFP rarely overlap."
Meanwhile, the DPP's survey center yesterday completed its public polls for candidates for Tainan and Kaohsiung county commissioners. The poll score accounts for 70 percent of candidates' primary scores.
A total of 28 candidates had previously registered to run for the commissioner and mayoral elections in 14 counties and cities.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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