The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday elected former deputy legislative speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) as the party’s first chairwoman in its more than 100-year history.
Hung secured 56.16 percent of the vote in the by-election, receiving 78,829 out of 140,358 votes cast, sparing the need to go to a second round of voting, which would have been required if none of the four candidates garnered more than 50 percent of the vote.
Voter turnout was 41.61 percent from a total of 337,351 eligible voters.
Photo: Reuters
KMT Acting Chairperson Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) placed second, securing 46,341 votes, or 33.02 percent.
Taipei City Councilor Lee Hsin (李新) finished third, winning 7,604 votes, or 5.42 percent, while Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) won 6,784 votes, or 4.83 percent.
After the final results were published, Hung thanked all party members, regardless of whether they voted for her, for staying with the party and showing their support when the party is at its nadir.
“As long as we are together, solidarity and hope will be in our hands. I will lead the party to restore our homeland, which has been in ruins,” she said.
When asked what her plan for cross-strait affairs would be and whether she would plan a trip to China, she said that she has no such plans, adding that KMT-Chinese Communist Party dialogue would continue.
“We can have a firmer grasp of our future if we have a better understanding of [China] and if we can help convey [China’s responses] to the government,” she said.
According to statistics provided by the KMT, Hung received the greatest support in Kinmen County, among overseas KMT members and in Lienchiang County, securing 85.58 percent, 78.51 percent and 74.66 percent of votes respectively.
Hung also received broad support in the two largest electoral districts — New Taipei City (41,405 possible voters who cast 16,792 votes) and Kaohsiung (42,420 voters who cast 16,094 votes) — where she received 10,924 votes and 9,360 votes respectively, whereas Huang received 4,131 and 4,956 votes respectively.
The by-election was marred by numerous reports of election violations.
A day before the by-election, several Internet users posted messages on the Professional Technology Temple — Taiwan’s largest online academic bulletin board — saying that older members of their families who are KMT members had received two voting notifications with different numbers, meaning that they would be able to vote twice.
Hung’s office yesterday reported a number of voting irregularities encountered across the nation, such as people trying to vote without notifications or identification, voters trying to cast ballots for another person, voting booths that were not curtained off and posters campaigning for Huang placed on the doors of polling stations.
‘FREEDOM WINE’: Taiwanese are empathetic of Australians, the president said, while lawmakers called on their constituents to drink Australian wine to show their support Taiwan would take action to back Australians at a time when they are “under tremendous pressure,” President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, as tensions between Australia and China heated up. Taipei and Canberra have been mutually supportive in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in exchanging critical medical materials in the early stages, Tsai said, before chairing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Central Standing Committee meeting in Taipei. Taiwan and Australia are like-minded nations, sharing the common values of democracy, freedom and human rights, while their economic and trade relations have also become close, she said. Canberra has been voicing support for Taiwan’s international
VIGILANCE: From tomorrow all arrivals must provide the result of a PCR test issued within three days of boarding, and the CECC asked people to report anyone who has faked their result The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) expects an increase in the number of returning travelers in the coming days, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday, adding that the varying qualities of COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test reports from other countries is a big concern. Chen, who heads the center, was speaking to the media on the sidelines of a Taiwan Foundation for Rare Disorders scholarship award ceremony in Taipei. “As the global COVID-19 situation is worsening, and with some holidays coming up, there might be an increase in the number of overseas Taiwanese returning to Taiwan,” he
CECC RULES: The autumn-winter COVID-19 prevention program, including mandatory mask wearing in eight types of public venues and indoor facilities, begins today A temporary, two-week ban on Indonesian migrant workers entering the nation is to begin on Friday, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced yesterday as it reported 24 new imported cases of COVID-19. Twenty of the new cases are Indonesian migrant workers who arrived between Nov. 11 and Friday last week, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center. The cases were discovered during a special project on Friday to conduct polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests on all 939 recently arrived Indonesian migrant workers in centralized quarantine facilities, as the majority of imported cases in the past
Passports with a redesigned cover highlighting Taiwan would be issued starting on Jan. 11, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The new cover design, which was announced on Sept. 2, highlights Taiwan by printing the word in a larger font. While the new passport cover retains “the Republic of China” in Chinese, the English name is printed along the outer circle of the national emblem, which would enable other nations to clearly identify that it is a Taiwanese passport, not a Chinese passport, the ministry said. The costs and application procedures for the new version are the same as
RSS