Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma said that he would throw his full support behind a Lien-Soong ticket for the 2004 presidential election if it is a decision jointly backed by the two parties.
After the meeting, Ma said a joint ticket is something favored by all pan-blue supporters.
He declined to comment further about the pairing of candidates, saying "it is more important to work on turning around the economy than talking about the pairing of candidates.
"The economy has been slumping. If we keep talking about who should go with whom for the presidential election, people will get tired of this issue. What we should focus on now is the economy," Ma said.
"At this moment, the less I say, the better," he added.
Ma said that he is confident about cooperation in the blue camp now that the mayoral elections are over, adding that such cooperation is essential.
Ma, who won a landslide victory in the Dec. 7 Taipei mayoral race over his DPP challenger Lee Ying-yuan (
Speculation has been rife that Ma would seek the job as president, based on his high popularity, and break the possible Lien and Soong pairing.
Ma has played down any ambition to run, but has also kept his options open by saying that "I have no such a plan at this moment," or that, "for the sake of pan-blue cooperation, I wouldn't hesitate to take up any position that I am capable of."
Since the mayoral election, the blue camp's plans for 2004 have become an increasingly popular political issue.
"Right now, it is more important to work on establishing a mechanism which can recommend a joint pair of candidates than pondering the match of candidates," KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (
Chen is considered a possible candidate to succeed the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou in the next Taipei mayoral election.
As for the rumored pairing of Ma and former Kaohsiung mayor Wu Den-yi (
"The choice of presidential candidates should be generated objectively through joint recommendation. I don't have personal opinions about any possible candidate," Wu 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