Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
"We are very grateful that Mayor Ma has accepted the position," Lien told reporters after paying his respects to a statue of the late president Chiang Kai-shek (
PHOTO: CNA
Lien was accompanied by Ma and scores of other KMT officials as he paid visits to both the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall yesterday to commemorate the 109th anniversary of the founding of the party
"But the announcement is not yet official. Ma will formally and officially take up the post when the alliance's campaign headquarters is launched on Dec. 7," Lien said.
Expressing confidence in Ma's vote-pulling effect, Lien said that Ma's addition to the alliance's campaign team would "immeasurably" boost the pan-blue camp's electoral outlook.
Ma, who also serves as the party's vice chairman, is regarded by many pan-blue supporters as one of the party's most popular officials.
Noting that Ma's hands would be full with managing his mayoral duties and performing his role in the campaign, Lien said that KMT Secretary-General Lin Feng-cheng (林豐正) and People First Party (PFP) Secretary-General Tsai Chung-hsiung (蔡鐘雄) would both serve as chief implementation campaign managers to help Ma handle the load.
Lien added that the chief campaign manager would be the one in charge of dividing up the workload between himself and the two chief implementation managers.
The pan-blue alliance's campaign team will be headed by KMT Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Given that the Election and Recall Law (
Ma stated that the final decision on whether he would take up the campaign post would depend on the response from the commission.
Ma said he will discuss with Lin and Tsai relevant tasks at the campaign headquarters should his campaign posting be approved.
When asked by reporters whether Lien's announcement was a sign that the party's middle generation was stepping closer to the KMT's leadership, Ma dismissed the question.
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