Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) yesterday said that she would not contest the legislative by-election in Miaoli in February next year and praised former Sunflower movement student leader Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) for his decision to join the race, where non-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates normally face a tough battle.
Following Chen’s announcement of his intention to run as an independent candidate in the by-election, the DPP’s office in Miaoli and Wu’s campaign team separately voiced objections to the DPP’s possible cooperation with the student activist.
Wu, who ran as DPP candidate for Miaoli County commissioner in the Nov. 29 election, but lost, apologized for the emotional response from her campaign team, which held a press conference on Monday saying that Chen is not Taipei mayor-elect Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and calling the headquarters’ move to yield the candidacy to Chen “despicable.”
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Wu said the team only wanted local opinions to be heard and hoped the party center would see their efforts at the local level, adding that she would support anyone the DPP decides to.
At the press conference, Wu also showed a photograph from the Sunflower movement’s occupation of the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber in March and April, in which she, one of the DPP lawmakers who quickly assumed the role of guarding the chamber from the police, is seen pulling Chen away from the police.
“Chen is the pride of the Miaoli people; we are both fighting for Miaoli,” said Wu, adding that she did not regret having pulled Chen from the police simply because they were now in competition.
Photo: CNA
Separately, Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), the convener of the DPP’s election response measure committee, said he would visit Miaoli with committee members to gather local opinions on the candidates. The DPP’s candidate is to be decided on Wednesday next week, either by the party on its own, or in cooperation with civic groups.
Meanwhile, in Miaoli, Chen announced that his campaign team is in place in the county and would start consulting local elders this week and holding campaign events next week.
The team also plans to visit Taipei and Greater Kaohsiung to invite young people who have left Miaoli for work or study to return home to volunteer and vote for change, he said.
Chen said he would welcome Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) of the KMT to compete in the by-election, calling on the KMT to speed up its candidate-fielding process so its selection can come under the electorate’s scrutiny.
Chen once hurled a shoe at Liu in protest over Liu’s government’s seizure and demolition of residents’ houses for a city development project, which Chen said was really a cover for the local government’s land speculation.
Chen was later charged and fined for throwing the shoe.
Chen called the legislative by-election “a make-up exam for the KMT after its defeat,” saying that the KMT’s candidate could be a reflection of the extent of so-called party reform that has been advocated by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is seeking the KMT chairmanship.
Chen thanked Wu for her withdrawal and said he would run as an independent instead of becoming a DPP member.
He said that was not out of political calculation, but a decision made out of his opposition to the KMT, along with his doubts about the DPP’s own reforms.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS