Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (
Taipei Deputy Mayor Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川) recently announced that he planned on running, while former Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) chief Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) returned to the KMT in a bid to seek the party's nomination for the election.
KMT Legislator Ting Shou-chung (
KMT legislators John Chiang (
Chinese-language media have dubbed the six KMT hopefuls "Chiang Chung-cheng ni hao ye" (蔣中正你好耶), a play on words that combines characters or approximate sounds from each of their names into the sentence, "How are you, Chiang Kai-shek?"
Tsai yesterday bragged about his Taiwanese roots, saying that he is the only candidate who is a native son who comes from the grassroots level of the capital city and has expertise in international management and finance.
People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) is also likely to announce his bid to run for the post shortly after the Lunar New Year holiday. An ad in yesterday's edition of the United Daily News, a pro-unification Chinese-language newspaper, urged the electorate to refrain from supporting Soong.
The half-page ad, posted by someone who claimed to belong to "the middle voters," insinuated that Soong is sabotaging a pan-blue camp merger.
"We, the middle voters, are calling on the public to use your ballots to drive pan-blue political figures who turn a blind eye to the unification of the pan-blue camp out of the political arena," the ad read.
Likening Soong to Yuan Shih-kai (袁世凱), a warlord in the early 1900s who overthrew the young Republic of China government and declared himself emperor, the ad implies that Soong fancies himself the president so much that he has developed Alzheimer's disease and completely forgets what he has said a minute ago.
"If you don't reign in your horses and you continue to ignore the unification of the pan-blue camp, the founding father, former president Chiang Kai-shek (
Soong said that he would not be discouraged by a single ad.
PFP Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) insinuated that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was behind the ad.
"Whenever there is an election, there is someone deliberately causing alienation. We won't be surprised if the DPP spent money running this ad as part of its attempt to sow discord," Chang said. "Instead of spending so much money placing the ad to tarnish a candidate, we'd like to see them donate the money to charity."
PFP caucus whip Lin Hui-kuan (
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique