The political geography was little changed yesterday as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), failed to boost their local standings.
Taipei City residents did not enthusiastically take part in the election. Statistics showed only 61 per-cent of voters cast ballots.
PHOTO: WU CHENG-TING, TAIPEI TIMES
In northern Taipei City, or district one, the pan-green camp and the pan-blue camp split the 10 seats down the middle. But the district was the only place the DPP's ballot-allocation strategy worked.
In district two, the pan-blue camp of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the People First Party (PFP) and New Party, retained their strong influence.
The KMT and the DPP each won three seats, the PFP took two and the TSU won one. Independent Li Ao (
The KMT's Lai Shyh-bao (
In Taipei County, the DPP held onto its 11 seats but its ally didn't fare as well. The TSU lost one of the two seats it had gained in 2001 election. The pan-blue camp added three more seats to the 13 it won in 2001 for a total of 16. KMT candidate Wu Yu-sheng (
Although President Chen Shui-bian (
In Taichung City, the pan-green and the pan-blues evenly split the eight seats being contested.
In Yunlin County, the pan-greens gained some ground, although the election was affected by the arrest of former county commissioner Chang Jung-wei (
The pan-greens added one seat to the two they won in the country in 2001 with the victory of TSU councilwoman Yin Lin-in (
In Chiayi County, the DPP safeguarded its three seats by taking 63 percent of the vote, while a KMT candidate won the other seat.
In Tainan County, home not only to President Chen but fanatic pan-green supporters, the DPP held onto its five seats by taking al-most half the votes. The KMT won two seats and an independent candidate took the remaining seat.
In Tainan City, the pan-green camp lost one of the four seats won in 2001 as the TSU's candidate lost. The KMT won two seats and a PFP candidate won one.
In the two electoral districts of Kaohsiung City, the pan-greens gained about 53 percent of the vote, a significantly improvement over the 48 percent won in 2001.
The DPP's Lee Kun-tse (
But the pan-green's vote-allocation strategy didn't work in the southern dis-trict, where they lost one seat. The greens won seven seats, the KMT took two and the PFP won two.
In Pingtung County, the DPP lost one of its four seats. The KMT won two seats and and an independent candidate took one.
In eastern Taiwan, the pan-blues continued their tradition of strong showings. In Taitung County, KMT Legislator Huang Chien-ting (
In Hualien County, DPP Legislator Lu Po-chi (
In offshore counties, independents and other candidates did well. Penghu County's sole seat was won by Lin Ping-kun (
Four Aboriginal candidates were elected in plains townships. The DPP's Chen Ying (
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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