The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is holding its primary for December's legislative elections today, and after party members have voted for their favorite candidates, the DPP will hold a nationwide poll to complete its nominations.
Primaries for the regional legislators and the legislators-at-large are kicking off at the same time, and potential candidates were campaigning hard yesterday.
There are also a few notable changes: seven legislators including Luo Wen-jia (
High-profile legislator-at-large Hsiao Bi-khim (
Hsiao's participation earlier introduced conflict with incumbent Lin Chung-mo (
Yesterday Tsai said the DPP primary mechanism needs further amendment.
"There are still many rumors about bribery in the primary," Tsai said.
The DPP party congress's decision in April to change the nomination rules for the legislators-at-large to eradicate family politics and "black gold" influences shook up some quarters, although some "gold cows" are still bidding for nominations.
According to party regulations for the legislators-at-large nominations, party-member votes and the poll each account for 50 percent of the weighting in choosing candidates. For the regional legislators, the party member votes will account for 70 percent and poll 30 percent in deciding who gets nominated.
While the DPP has started its nomination process, the pan-blue camp's campaign activity has been stalled by the two allied parties' plans to merge.
Earlier this week, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice chairman and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the