One of the decisive forces in the legislative election may be the newly-formed Non-Partisan Soli-darity Union (NPSU, 無黨團結聯盟), and yet the party is a motley crew of candidates who have little in common. About the only thing that does unite the candidates is that they don't know much about what the party is doing, and they don't really care.
The candidates seldom meet with the party's leader, and there is no joint campaign or common strategy. All of which poses the question of whether the union is really a party at all.
Next month's legislative elections are ones in which the candidates in the south have avoided highlighting their party orientation, and instead stressed their personal image.
But the newly-formed NPSU, suffering from its novelty and lack of a central ideology, has been especially weak in presenting a comprehensive and coherent impression of the party. Most of its candidates are selling their own personal qualities instead of party affiliation.
The better-known NPSU candidates include Aboriginal Legislator May Chin (
One NPSU candidate, who wished to remain unidentified, said bluntly that he did not have close ties with the party headquarters.
"I do not interact with the party very much, and I have never met the chairwoman Chang Po-ya (
When asked about whether the candidate was familiar with the NPSU's legislators-at-large, the candidate was nonplussed.
"There should be some out there," the candidate said.
Steven Huang (
"But I don't understand what the NPSU is doing either," Huang said, sounding as if he wasn't even an NPSU candidate.
Huang is holding strong in the campaign not because he is an NPSU member, but because he comes from a family with strong political support.
"The party has the chance to compete with the Taiwan Solidarity Union, but I don't understand how the NPSU operates either," he said.
Huang said that he did not know where the NPSU headquarters was, and he only met the chairwoman once or twice.
Huang said he became a NPSU member because of NPSU legislative caucus whip Tsai Hao's (
But Tsai told Huang that if he was elected from the NPSU, he would be much more influential, since the NPSU is likely to become a decisive minority in the legislature.
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator-at-large Lee Ho-shun (
But he has been perplexed about his new party, and hasn't benefited from his membership.
"For the legislative election, the important thing is whether you will support your local constituents, how you present yourself and whether you serve the constituency well," Lee said.
He said that he joined the NPSU because it couldn't hurt.
"It is freer here," Lee said. "I care more about serving my constituency. I don't want to get involved in party and faction conflicts."
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
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