The DPP has pinned hopes on former president Lee Teng-hui (
DPP Legislator Hong Chi-chang (
Since the DPP earned 38 percent of the votes cast in Taipei in the 2000 presidential election, it could still win a simple majority if the former president campaigned for Lee Ying-yuan, Hong said.
"We believe most centrist voters who supported former president Lee would shift to us," Hong told reporters, dismissing opinion polls that show Ma far out front.
Pundits said it would be a difficult win for the DPP just five weeks from the election.
If the elections were held this week, Ma would earn 70 percent of the votes, compared to just 19 percent for Lee, a local television station poll conducted on Oct. 20 and 21 found.
Chen's campaigning for Lee Ying-yuan bolstered the candidate by only 5 percent in the polls, even after he accused Ma of disloyalty to Taiwan.
Ma has yet to turn negative in his campaign though he did reject Chen's allegations as efforts to avenge his loss in the 1998 mayoral race.
"I have no cards of president and premier to play [like my rival]. Nor do I have so many min-isters to march," Ma said at a campaign rally yesterday.
"What I have is only your support, your support only," he said.
Meanwhile, the former president is scheduled to leave for Japan on Nov. 23, a TSU spokesman said yesterday.
Hsiao Kuan-yu (
Hsiao said Lee Teng-hui has not yet applied for a visa.
"We believe that the possibility of Lee securing a visa is very high," he said.
Lee made a private visit to Japan in April last year to receive medical treatment. The visit sparked heated debate in the Japanese political arena and drew a strong protest from Beijing.
The Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported last month that Keio University's largest students' association -- Keizai Shinjin Kai (Economics Freshmen Associa-tion) -- had invited Lee Teng-hui to deliver a speech on the Jap-anese spirit to mark the school's founding anniversary.
The paper said that it was not clear whether the Japanese government would grant him an entry permit.
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