Another party member who lost in Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) primaries for the December legislative elections yesterday announced his intention to run in the election at the expense of his party membership.
The declaration of former legislator Fang Yi-liang (
Among them are Legislator Tseng Tsai Mei-tso (
`To the very end'
Legislator-at-large Lee Ho-shun (
Fang, from the Tainan County constituency, called into question the legitimacy of the primary system's opinion poll and demanded the party reveal what he claimed should have been "the true poll result."
The KMT's primary included two components. The first consisted of votes by party members, which carried a weight of 30 percent.
The second component, a public opinion poll, carried a weight of 70 percent.
This was the first time that such a method had been used in the party's primary to decide who would be recommended for the party's nominations.
authority
In view of some party members' insistence on running despite their failure to secure the party's nomination, some members called on the party to exercise authority and party discipline to get the situation under control, while others urged the party authorities to examine the primary system as a whole for improvement.
"What is the point of holding primaries if the result is that one can run [in the elections] even without the party's nomination?" said KMT Legislator Lee Chuan-chiao (
Taipei City Councilor Wang Hao (
Others directed their criticism at the party's Huang Fu Hsing (
Huang Fu Hsing is a special branch of the KMT whose members are military veterans or their family members.
high mobility
Due to the high mobility of the Huang Fu Hsing branch members, Chen said that party members who took part in the primary were mostly members of the branch.
Candidates supported by the branch, as a result, were likely to garner high numbers of votes in the primaries.
Saying that there were big gaps demonstrated in the primaries between the results of the party members' votes and the results of the opinion polls, Chen said that this also illustrated the big gap between party opinion and public opinion.
"The primary has much room for reform and improvement. Otherwise, it will be hard to meet the expectations of the general public," Chen 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