Addressing media speculation yesterday, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) said he didn't believe that PFP legislators would fail to vote in accordance with the party's wishes when voting in the legislative speaker election on Feb 1.
"That is ridiculous," Soong said.
Chinese-language media reported yesterday that Soong told Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice chairman, that he was worried five of the PFP's 34 legislators would not vote in accordance with the party's position in the speaker and deputy speaker elections. According to the report, Soong also told Wang that the PFP was making provisions against the possibility.
It has been widely speculated that the pan-blue ticket of Wang and PFP Legislator Chung Jung-chi (鐘榮吉) will lose several PFP votes, given that PFP Legislator Shen Chih-huei (沈智慧), who was also interested in running for deputy speaker and her supporters, are rumored to be unhappy with the party since she lost its vote for deputy speaker candidate.
Wang is running for re-election, while the PFP has nominated its own candidate,Chung, for the deputy legislative speaker position in the new legislature. Both the KMT and the PFP have touted the success of the Wang-Chung ticket as essential to the future of cooperation between the two parties in the legislature.
Speaking yesterday morning at a funeral service for Yang Yung-kuei (楊永奎), the father-in-law of PFP Legislator Cheng Chin-ling (鄭金玲), Soong said that the report was "chaotic" and stressed that the KMT and the PFP need to work together.
After visiting independent legislators yesterday to solicit support for Wang and Chung, Soong said he will also visit PFP legislators to consolidate support for the ticket.
When questioned yesterday, Wang also denied the rumors.
"There was no such occurrence. Before every election, there are all sorts of rumors," Wang said.
To consolidate support for the Wang-Chung ticket, the KMT and PFP are co-sponsoring a rally tonight, where it is anticipated that KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Soong will meet for the first time since the PFP chief returned home from the US on Saturday.
Also see story:
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS