Accompanied by throngs of supporters and party officials, the nation's presidential candidates registered their candidacies with the Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
Accompanied by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and greeted by cheering supporters, Ma and his running mate, Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), completed their registration at about 10:20am.
PHOTO: EPA
CALM
"I feel very calm now. Having completed the registration process ... I feel the weight of responsibility and I will act with great caution from now on," Ma said afterwards.
As part of the registration process, Ma handed over a NT$15 million (US$464,000) registration deposit to the CEC.
PHOTO: EPA
The commission will review the presidential candidates' applications on Feb. 12, before holding a drawing to determine the numbers attributed to the candidates on presidential ballots on Feb. 15.
Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and his running mate, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), arrived at the office in the company of their wives at about 11:30am.
The group was heavily guarded by police as the candidates addressed the media following their registration.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Some 250 police officers stood guard at the CEC as DPP supporters waved Hsieh campaign flags and chanted slogans.
PLEDGE
Speaking outside the commission, Hsieh made a "five noes" pledge.
"If I am elected president, my family and I will not invest in the stock market," he said. "My spouse, children and I will not serve as board members of any foundations, nor will we engage in any commercial activities with any government agencies."
Hsieh said nobody in his family had a US green card or a passport issued by a foreign country.
"I believe, as presidential candidates, we need to make some information [about ourselves] available to the public. People have the right to know," he said.
Hsieh said although the law did not prohibit the president and the first family from making stock investments, the president should impose "the highest possible standards" upon himself.
Hsieh said he did not make the pledges to target Ma, who said on Jan. 18 that he would not prohibit his family members from buying and selling stocks if elected president, as long as no insider trading was involved.
Hsieh said yesterday that he was "very surprised" to hear Ma's comments on the matter and that he made the "no stock market" pledge in a bid to distance himself from his rival.
"This is a very serious issue," Hsieh said.
Later, at the opening of his campaign headquarters in Taipei, Hsieh suggested that Ma may have a green card or US passport.
"Ma is being extremely proud by refusing to disclose his or his family's immigration status," he said.
Hsieh said the next legislature would enable Ma to cover up any wrongdoing because the majority of its lawmakers would be from Ma's party.
"If I do anything wrong, the legislature will depose me. But the legislature will never dare to depose Ma, which means he will be protected even if he performs poorly as president," he said.
Hsieh urged voters to scrutinize Ma's economic policies, which the DPP candidate said would widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
MOVING OUT
Hsieh said that tens of thousands of people had to move out of Taipei during Ma's eight-year stint as mayor because housing prices had skyrocketed.
Young people are deterred from coming to Taipei, he said, because they simply cannot afford the cost of living in the city.
"While Ma's economic plan is based on figures, my plan makes people's welfare and happiness the priority," he said.
Addressing the opening ceremony of his campaign headquarters, Ma denounced the DPP for damaging the country through its poor performance, and promised to lay the foundation for peace and prosperity should he win the March 22 election.
"The damage caused by the DPP was five times more serious than that caused by the 921 earthquake and 10 times more serious than the aftermath of Typhoon Nari," Ma said in front of his campaign headquarters on Aikuo E Road.
"I will spare no effort to regain power and clean up the mess left by the DPP. I will lay the foundation for a 100-year period of peace and prosperity for Taiwan," he said.
FIRST STEP
The opening of the new legislature on Friday, Ma said, was merely the first step toward reform. He urged voters to give the KMT another victory on March 22 so that the new government would have a harmonious relationship with the legislature.
"Reform will not be successful and people's lives will not improve unless the government works closely with the legislature," he said.
Amid cheers from hundreds of supporters who crowded around his headquarters, Ma pledged to build a "new Taiwan" if elected, promising to establish a clean government, revive the economy, pursue justice and promote creativity and the nation's continued cultural development.
KMT heavyweights, including Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), Wang and former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), joined Ma and Siew on stage and presented the presidential candidate with two stems of sugar cane as a symbol of the campaign's continuous progress and prosperity.
Additional reporting by Jenny W. Hsu
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS