The legislative race of independent Lin Chin-chang (林晉章) has been marked by media spectacles following his public call on Oct. 1 urging the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to drop its adherence to the "one China" policy and a violent encounter outside the KMT headquarters after his subsequent dismissal from the party on Oct. 27.
While Lin has since continued his calls for the KMT to drop the policy, which advocates eventual unification with China, as part of his campaign strategy, it remains to be seen if the maverick Taipei City councilor will become a member of next year's legislature.
Speaking with the Taipei Times last night, Lin said that he had wanted to run for the legislature ever since he joined the KMT.
"As someone with a legal background, it's natural for me to want to create legislation myself," said Lin, who has a law degree from National Chengchi University.
Lin said he knew the party was unlikely to support his legislative bid, but he decided to run this year anyway.
While it might seem that the party's decision to revoke his membership might be due to his outspokenness, legislative candidate Pan Chien-kuo (龐建國) said that that was not necessarily the case.
"In an area as competitive as the south district, the party needed to draw clear the boundary between Lin and its official candidates for voters, so that his candidacy would not threaten the chances of the KMT's favored nominees," said the People First Party legislator yesterday.
Lin is running in the hotly competitive Taipei City south district, which has thirty candidates vying for its ten legislative seats.
Pan is also hoping for a seat in that district.
It is unlikely that the punitive action was due to Lin's publicized calls for the KMT to drop its adherence to the "one China" policy, said Pan, since at the time of the party's decision, Lin's pleas had not yet received wide media coverage.
Although Lin was not widely known at first, his stance against the "one China" policy has since gained steam with the establishment of his Movement to Abandon the "One China" Policy Alliance.
At the alliance's establishment ceremony in Oct. 24, Lin saw over a thousand people show up to express their support.
It remains to be seen how Lin's candidacy will affect the voting situation in Taipei south .
When asked about his chances, he candidly admitted that things do not seem optimistic.
"According to media polls, I'm anywhere from the number 11 to number 14 in the district, not one of the 10 that will get a seat.
But there's still some time before the election," Lin 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
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
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