Citing party regulations, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) yesterday said that New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) cannot join the KMT chairmanship by-election in March.
“Under the KMT’s election regulations, Yok is not entitled to vie for the KMT chairmanship, but he is welcome to bring his party comrades back to the KMT,” Lee said at KMT headquarters in Taipei yesterday morning.
He made the comment after outlining the details of the March 26 by-election, in response to the Chinese-language China Times interview with the 75-year-old Yok, published on Sunday, in which Yok said that the New Party National Committee had passed a resolution on Saturday endorsing his effort to enter the KMT race.
Lee said that KMT regulations stipulate that only party members who have served as members of the Central Advisory Committee or Central Committee are allowed to vie for the chairmanship.
Yok told the newspaper that his joining the by-election would be significant for two reasons.
“The first one is the unity of pan-blue parties, which is what former KMT chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) had urged before the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections,” the newspaper quoted Yok as saying.
There is no point in differentiating between the KMT and the New Party or the People First Party (PFP) at a time when both the KMT and the Republic of China (ROC) have been defeated, he told the paper.
The second significance is that his bid for the KMT’s top post would be a test of the KMT leadership’s sincerity in seeking pan-blue political unity, said Yok, who quit the KMT more than two decades ago.
The most important task facing the KMT now is not the by-election, or changing its name or pushing for internal reforms, but eliminating all KMT members who do not share “the soul of the party,” which is safeguarding the ROC’s core values, he said.
The New Party was established in 1993 by Yok and several other KMT members who opposed then-KMT chairman and president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) localization policy.
The PFP was founded by James Soong (宋楚瑜) in 2000 after he lost his bid for the presidency. He had run as an independent after failing to win the KMT’s nomination and his decision to enter the race led the KMT to expel him on Nov. 17, 1999. Soong has been the PFP’s chairman since the party’s founding.
The Grassroots Alliance, a group of younger, pro-reform KMT members, yesterday criticized Yok.
“Is Yok suggesting that only those who agree with his ideas can be deemed to share the KMT’s soul, while those who take issue with them should leave the party? If Yok is that good at leading a party and his ideas are as widely recognized as he believes, how come the New Party only received 4.1 percent of the party votes in the Jan. 16 elections?” the group said in a statement.
Yok’s complicated links with corporations and government officials have long been a matter of contention and his perceived support for rapid unification is the sole reason why most Taiwanese distrust the New Party, it said.
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,