Candidates in the Hualien County commissioner by-election yesterday courted the vote of Aborigines as heavyweight politicians continued to stream down from Taipei.
In a bid to attract support from younger voters, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) traveled to Hualien to join Hsieh Shen-shan (謝深山), who is representing the KMT and PFP, in a street procession.
PHOTO: YANG YI-CHUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Last week, about 60 supporters of Wu Kuo-tung (
The group said that they "want no Taipei people intervening the Hualien voters' decision."
Ma nevertheless turned up in the county yesterday and went with Hsieh and his supporters through Meilun, an industrial region in the northern suburbs of Hualien City.
Ma then joined Hsieh at a rally in Nanpin Park, where an Aboriginal festival was taking place, before wrapping up the campaign activities with a gathering held in front of Hsieh's campaign headquarters.
Ma's visit comes a week after PFP Vice Chairman Chang Chao-hsiung (
Today, Hsieh will campaign with
DPP candidate You Ying-lung (
Vying for votes from Aborigines, one of the area's four major ethnic groups along with Hakka, Taiwanese and mainlanders, You yesterday made public his welfare policies for the county's Aborigines.
He promised to create 2,000 jobs for Aborigines and offer NT$5,000 per month to Aboriginal chiefs, of which there are 200 in the county, so they can provide better services to their communities.
A campaign team made up of Aborigines was also created yesterday to support You's campaign.
Wu, the only other candidate in the race, yesterday held a street procession before staging a campaign rally in the evening, during which he laid out his policies and vision for the county.
Wu told the rally he was the only one who could truly represent the voice Hualien's people.
"Does the Hualien by-election need all those people from Taipei to tell us Hualien people who is the best one to bring Hualien a promising future?" Wu said.
"There is no need for Taipei people to intervene in Hualien's affairs," he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods