President Chen Shui-bian (
The arrangement was made after Hsieh, the incumbent seeking re-election, extended the invitation to the ex-president after their meeting in Kaohsiung on Sunday.
The party wants to make use of Lee's popularity in the region to help beef up Hsieh's reportedly declining public support.
Hsieh, the forerunner for months, is experiencing a tough time in the final moments of the campaign after PFP chairman James Soong (
According to Michael You (游盈隆), the DPP's deputy secretary general, Hsieh is still leading the polls by around 10 percent, but the lead is narrowing after the pan-blue camp threw its support behind one candidate.
But a survey conducted by the DPP was the only one that indicated Hsieh was still the forerunner. Other polls done by the TVBS news channel and two Chinese-language newspapers all showed that Huang has slight lead.
In contrast to Hsieh's situation, Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), the DPP's candidate for Taipei mayor, is facing an even tougher battle in Taipei as incumbent Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) popularity remains high.
The DPP is poised to make a last-ditch effort to campaign for Lee as Chen, first lady Wu Shu-chen (
Chen is expected to stump for Lee Ying-yuan on Thursday and Friday, whereas Wu will campaign for him on Friday.
Lee Ying-yuan said he still would still welcome Lee Teng-hui to stump for him, regardless of a warning by Fan Chen-tsung (范振宗), the head of the Council of Agriculture, who left his position yesterday.
Fan said that Lee Ying-yuan should not invite the ex-president to stump for him because it might have a negative impact on the candidate's showing.
The former president stumped for Lee Ying-yuan for the first time on Saturday, which drew a rally of approximately 10,000 supporters.
But insiders in the DPP admitted that the appearance of Lee Teng-hui did little to help Lee's sluggish popularity.
Initially Fan had arranged to stump for Lee Ying-yuan today, but the plan was dropped after he made the statements.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: