The nomination of a suitable candidate for the Yunlin county by-election is proving a huge headache for KMT officials, with local factional interests blocking them at every turn.
Following Sunday's surprise announcement by Taipei judge Wang Pei-chih (王培智) that he would not to accept the party nomination, KMT officials have been desperately trying to secure a candidate for the Oct. 16 by-election.
According to a KMT source, the frontrunner for the position is the deputy director-general of National Police Administration (NPA) Wang Chun (
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Yesterday, Johnson Chen (
He said he had spent more than two hours with Wang on Sunday to convince him to stay in the race.
"Since Wang has now declined the nomination, we're being forced to make other arrangements," Chen said.
Chen said the party was looking for a candidate that had both the support of local factional leaders in Yunlin, and could leap straight into the by-election race.
Chen admitted that the NPA deputy director-general Wang Chun was highly recommended by party heavyweights.
Legislator Hsu Shu-po (
"Whether I support Wang Chun or not mainly depends on the KMT's sincerity," he said.
A KMT source said yesterday that it appeared the factions would allow Wang to be nominated because he is not aligned with any one faction. His appointment may be an acceptable compromise, the source said.
The KMT official said that among the five legislators from Yunlin who had showed interest in the by-election race, each one had to be struck off the list because of their alliances with individual power bases.
The DPP's director of organizational department, Jimmy Kuo (
"They would rather hand the seat to their enemy than their comrades. Because they are so frightened if they fail to keep their position, their own faction will be swallowed up," Kuo said.
The KMT official agreed, saying that factions now determined many of the party's decisions, including Sunday's selection of Wang Pei-chih.
"Among the five legislators, if Hsu had won the support of at least three of them, then we would have considered nominating him. But unfortunately, things didn't turn out that way," Chen said.
For this reason, he said, the KMT had been compelled to nominate the inexperienced Wang.
Speaking yesterday on his decision to decline the post, Wang said he had neither enough time, money, or factional support to win the by-election.
According to party insiders yesterday, it appeared Wang Chun was also considering accepting the nomination.
Officials said that Wang had initially refused a nomination last week during a meeting with KMT secretary-general John Chang (
Chen said that if Wang Chun refused again, the KMT chairman for Yunlin county, Chang Cheng-hsiung, (
A final decision is expected at the KMT's Central Standing Committee tomorrow.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
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
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
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
RSS