Many pan-blue alliance veterans are expected to return to work for the Taipei City Government, following in the footsteps of former alliance campaign spokesman Jack Yu (游梓翔), who is set to become the city government spokesman.
Yu, an associate professor in speech communications at Shih Hsin University, will succeed Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), who plans to run for a legislative seat in December and has promised to step down as soon as he is nominated in the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) primary.
Wu has said that he is confident of winning a nomination in the primary in two weeks.
At the end of last month, Wu said the city government would undergo a large-scale personnel reshuffle before next month as many of the bureau directors will soon start campaigning for the year-end elections for legislators and next year's county commissioner election.
In the past week, deputy mayors Pai Hsiou-hsiung (白秀雄) and Ou Chin-der (歐晉德) both indicated they plan to leave and Bureau of Civil Affairs Director Samuel Wu (吳秀光), who plans to campaign for Hualien County commissioner, also asked to leave.
Samuel Wu said yesterday that he has to go back to Hualien to plan his campaign for the poll in December next year and he has submitted his resignation to Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
"Since the protests against the presidential election in Taipei City came to an end, the city's bureau chiefs have reached an agreement to help Mayor Ma have a broader space to prove his ability," Wu Yu-sheng said yesterday.
"We will assist Ma in organizing a stronger administrative team and creating better municipal work for residents," Wu added.
Pai said that he was willing to cooperate with Ma's plans and he will not be reluctant to leave his office.
"I think it is time to leave. The timing is quite appropriate," Pai said.
Former city spokesman King Pu-tsun (金溥聰), who is considered an influential adviser to Ma, was said to be a hot candidate of one of the deputy mayor jobs. King yesterday refused to comment on the speculation.
But the journalism department at National Chengchi University, where King has been a professor, yesterday confirmed that King has resigned from his post.
According to sources, two former directors of the city's Bureau of Health, Chiu Shu-shih (邱淑媞) and Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川), are also on the short list for deputy mayors. Chiu said yesterday that she was willing to work for the city government. Yeh said he knew about the vacancy, but he has not yet decided anything.
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,
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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