People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday pledged that he would run in the presidential election, following the announcement that the number of signatures for his presidential petition had passed the threshold and reached 355,589.
Standing with running mate Lin Ruey-shiung (林瑞雄) in front of several dozen supporters, Soong vowed to reach beyond bipartisan politics and improve the lives of Taiwanese if elected, saying the signatures reflected expectations for a prosperous society in which people could determine their own future without being manipulated by political parties, while dismissing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) criticism of his presidential bid.
“The signatures could be seen as a black list [by the government] 30 or 50 years ago. Things are better now and [for the government] this is a troublemaking list ... The nation is divided because of partisan confrontations and it is time to let Taiwanese be their own masters. What Taiwanese want is a government that takes care of its people,” he told a press conference held at Taipei City Council.
Photo: Taipei Times
PFP Vice Chairman Chang Chao-hsiung (張昭雄) said the 355,589 signatures in 142 boxes had been delivered to the Central Election Commission’s (CEC) Taipei branch. The PFP would deliver a second batch of signatures to the commission on Saturday, he said.
The first batch of signatures passed the threshold of 257,695 required under the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), which stipulates that presidential and vice presidential hopefuls gather signatures amounting to 1.5 percent of voters in the previous election.
The commission’s Taipei branch said it would examine the petition forms, before sending them to the CEC for a final review. Soong and Lin would obtain formal candidacies if the petitions pass the reviews, it said.
Soong expressed interest in joining the presidential election and started his petition in September, despite calls from the KMT for pan-blue unity.
Soong and Lin originally pledged not to join the race unless they collected 1 million signatures to prove their popularity, but Soong later said he would enter the race if the petition passed the legal threshold.
The PFP chairman said his aim was not to knock any candidate out of the race, although he said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had failed to revive the nation’s economy and reduce the unemployment rate.
He also challenged Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to declare Taiwan independent if she is elected in January.
“I am not targeting any specific candidates. Besides, I will have to knock two candidates out of the race to win the election. People are worried about one of them and they are dissatisfied with the other, so let’s knock both of them out of the race and make things right,” Soong said.
Attending the press conference in support of Soong’s bid, former legislator Li Ao (李敖) condemned the government for setting high thresholds for participation in presidential elections and accused Ma of being a dictatorial leader.
“The key to Ma’s problems do not lie in his incompetence, but in his dictatorship,” Li said.
Li and Chang criticized the role of Ma’s top aide, his re-election campaign executive director King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), in the policymaking process and shared their concerns about the future of Taiwan under the “Ma-King mechanism.”
“Under the Ma-King mechanism, King is the decisionmaker and Ma is the terrible executor — a soulless scarecrow — and such a mechanism is dangerous for Taiwan,” Chang said.
At a separate setting yesterday, KMT Culture and Communications Committee Director Chuang Po-chun (莊伯仲) said the party respected Soong’s decision, but that it would continue its efforts to seek KMT-PFP cooperation.
Tsai, meanwhile, said Soong’s entry was a norm and a protected right of any democratic country.
“He will be a respectable and formidable opponent,” she said.
Additional reporting by Chris Wang
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS