Though Apollo Chen (陳學聖) doesn't want to vie against colleague Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for the job of Taipei mayor, he wouldn't mind running for the post, the KMT legislator said yesterday.
"I'm interested in running for Taipei mayor, though the priority now is on Ma Ying-jeou, whom I also support," Chen told the Taipei Times.
Chen, an advocate of internal reforms within the KMT and one of the party's rising stars, said he would consider making a bid for Taipei mayor once Ma vacates the seat.
Mayor Ma has said he intends to seek a second term in the year-end elections, while feigning disinterest in the 2004 presidential contest.
Still, many KMT members hope Ma will represent the party in the race.
Meanwhile, representatives for the Taipei mayor said that Ma has postponed setting up his campaign office for re-election.
"Due to some factors," the establishment of the office has been postponed until further notice, said Ma spokesman Wu Yu-sheng (
The office was originally sch-eduled to open this month. When asked whether the delay indicated Ma was having second thoughts about running for re-election, Wu declined to comment.
Chen said it was very unlikely that Ma will pull out of the race. "I think the reason for the postponement mainly has to do the fact that the Ma camp wants to lay more thorough plans for its campaign operations before they are officially set up," he said.
While Ma currently enjoys high approval ratings and is expected to win re-election easily, Chen cautioned the Ma camp not to be careless.
"The Ma camp needs to keep in mind that people who voted for Ma four years ago might not be there this time around," Chen said.
For example, the mayor's decision to crack down on street venders has irked some constituents.
There are also voters who cast ballots for Ma four years ago because of his endorsement from then president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
"This time around, those votes will be gone," Chen said, since another endorsement from Lee isn't likely.
In 1998, Lee endorsed Ma as a "new Taiwanese" the night before voters went to the polls.
Analysts say Lee's endorsement helped Ma -- born in Hong Kong -- over the ethnicity hurdle to defeat Chen Shui-bian (
Still, while there may be areas of concern for Ma, Chen said the road to electoral victory should be a smooth one, given that the DPP has yet to name a candidate.
"As for the PFP, because of its cooperation with the KMT, the party will not nominate a candidate to run against Ma," Chen said.
But Chang Hsien-yao (
The two parties have cooperated in the legislature to oppose the DPP, and that has led to speculation that their joint political venture may be extended to the December polls.
"As of now, the PFP has yet to decide whether to throw its support behind Ma's run for Taipei mayor," Chang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching