The KMT's election campaign heated up yesterday as the party's Taipei chapter launched the "KMT Youth Corps," with the aim of promoting its candidates for the December elections.
Addressing the 600 young people perched on motor scooters outside the Taipei City Council yesterday morning, KMT Vice Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) said that young people are playing an important role in the reform of the KMT.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"They're valuable assets and the driving force behind the party's reform and resurrection," he said.
Members of the youth corps will campaign on their scooters for the party.
Wu added that Taiwanese people had come to understand over the past year and a half since the DPP came to power that Taiwan cannot move forward without the KMT.
"Only the new KMT can lead the nation out of the current economic and social hardship," he said.
Wu also called on the public to support the KMT's legislative candidates.
"None of the KMT candidates nominated for the year-end legislative elections has any connection with black gold politics and they therefore deserve the people's trust," he said.
The party has nominated a total of eight candidates to run in Taipei City constituencies.
The four candidates nominated for the city's northern constituency are deputy chief of the party's cultural affairs department, Tsai Cheng-yuan (
The other four, nominated for the southern constituency, are incumbent lawmakers Apollo Chen (陳學聖), Chen Horng-chi (陳鴻基) and Tina Pan (潘維剛); and John Chang (章孝嚴), a former KMT secretary-general and foreign minister.
After some candidates delivered pep talks, the eight candidates were presented with a giant mock check, symbolizing their campaign promises and encouraging them to be focused, professional and disciplined in the election campaign.
Wu also presented flags to the 12 team captains leading the scooter riders, symbolizing the beginning of the party's campaign activities.
The teams, which are comprised of both KMT members and non-members, were recruited from the Taipei chapter of the KMT Youth Commission.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying