The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday said it was standing firm on its decision to vie for the legislative speakership, even as the pan-blue alliance was consolidating its ticket.
Although DPP Secretary-General Chang Chun-hsiung (
Chang was originally nominated as a legislator-at-large because the party wanted him to run for the speakership, but after his withdrawal, veteran Legislator Trong Chai (
"We will choose the speaker in an election, and it is impossible for the DPP to miss the race. We have to have a winning strategy if we want to run in the race, and the candidate has become a minor issue," DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
Ker said that since the legislative election results were gloomy for the DPP, the party is under a lot of pressure concerning the speakership race.
Ker implied that the DPP might still have a chance of winning the race by exploiting internal conflicts within the pan-blue camp.
"The Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] has its ideas about how to approach the election on Feb. 1, and so does the DPP. Any strategy may be adopted," Ker said.
"Regarding the deputy speakership, we have seen that Legislator Chung Jung-chi (
KMT caucus whip Tseng Yung-chuan (
PFP caucus whip Liu Wen-hsiung (
Liu also said that Soong was immediately informed of Chung's selection as the PFP's candidate two days ago, after the vote was completed.
Chung is expected to form a joint ticket with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), but Wang said yesterday that although he and Chung would seek support from all lawmakers, they would tentatively conduct their own campaigns separately, due to concerns about their different schedules.
"Because Chung is starting late, he still needs to visit KMT and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union [NPSU] lawmakers for support. So for the moment, we will make our visits separately due to our difference schedules," Wang said.
Two days ago some KMT lawmakers had voiced dissent about a KMT-PFP ticket, saying they would have preferred a pure KMT ticket, but Wang responded to the dissent yesterday, saying that there were fewer and fewer lawmakers who disagreed with cross-party collaboration.
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