Newly nominated Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday said he would take a three-month leave of absence from his job as New Taipei City mayor, starting today, to focus on his campaign.
New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) will stand in for Chu during his absence.
Chu, who is only 10 months into his second four-year term, made the announcement after a meeting of the New Taipei City Council in the morning, which had been brought ahead from today.
Photo: CNA
“I was nominated on Saturday to represent the KMT in next year’s presidential election, for which I must apologize to every resident of the city because I had pledged on more than one occasion that I would not join the race,” Chu said.
“It is a painful, but necessary decision that needed to be made at such a critical moment,” he said.
Chu’s decision to throw his hat into the ring for the Jan. 16 presidential election has triggered a wave of criticism from the public and some inside the KMT, largely because of his oft-repeated promise to serve out his term as mayor.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tuan Yi-kang’s (段宜康) on Sept. 26 estimated that Chu had made the promise 24 times between June last year and May.
Chu, who also serves as KMT chairman, said a presidential election concerns a nation’s future and its major policies, and that he must take on the responsibility of offering the public a healthier democracy.
Given the nearness of the election, Chu said he had asked his administrative officials to stand fast at their posts and work as a team.
“During this interim period, Deputy Mayor Hou will face a heavy workload, but my administration is confident of its ability to go a good job governing the municipality,” Chu said.
He said he would remain in close contact with his team through various channels, including mobile messaging app Line.
If elected president, he plans to expand many of his successful policies and experiences as mayor on a nationwide scale, Chu said.
“I also plan to bring the resources of the central government back to the city,” he added.
In a move to defuse criticism about his decision to enter the presidential race without stepping down as mayor, Chu said it is customary, at home and abroad, for politicians to run for new offices without resigning from their current posts.
“It is my belief that as long as a candidate’s team is capable of doing a good job, there is no reason why he cannot maintain stability in the city and continue to strive for the betterment of his city,” Chu said.
New Taipei City Government Information Department Director Lin Chieh-yu (林芥佑) said Chu decided not to accept a salary during his leave of absence.
“An estimated NT$570,000 due the mayor over the next three months is to be donated to the city government’s coffers,” Lin said.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS