Recent news about Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) plans for vote allocation in the year-end legislative elections for candidates within their own party became a point of contention between the party and its ally the People First Party (PFP) yesterday, with PFP chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) reminding the KMT of the PFP's importance.
The leadership of the two parties initially seemed friendly yesterday with KMT heavyweight and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Soong yesterday appearing together to stump for PFP Legislator Chung Shao-ho's (鍾紹和) re-election run in Kaohsiung County. Despite handshakes between the two, Soong's comments at the rally revealed that he did not consider the KMT to be cooperating with the PFP.
"Speaker Wang's math is very good. He knows that for the pan-blue alliance to win a majority of seats in the legislative elections, the KMT and the PFP have to be added together in order for there to be a majority," Soong said yesterday.
For the pan-blue alliance to capture a majority in the year-end legislative elections, the KMT and its ally the PFP must together win over 113 seats in the 225-seat legislature. KMT Organization and Development Affairs Director-General Liao Feng-te (廖風德) said yesterday that the party expects 54 to 58 of its 74 candidates to win seats in the Dec. 11 elections. The PFP has 41 candidates running in the elections.
"There are some people in the KMT that are not willing to allocate votes with the PFP. These people are still not clear about their position. Does this mean that calls for cooperation were just lies?" Soong asked.
Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) also commented about the KMT's plans yesterday. According to Ma, the most important issue now is cross-party endorsements for pan-blue legislative candidates, and not vote allocation plans.
There is still one month until the elections. The KMT will focus on how to best allocate votes between candidates, Ma said.
The Taipei City mayor was nearly hit with an egg yesterday while stumping for KMT legislative candidate Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池).
While shaking hands with voters in a market with Lin, an unidentified woman tossed an egg at the mayor from behind, but missed.
Ma took the incident in stride, saying it must be a campaign side-effect of the competition between the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERs IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
RSS