In the latest development in the run-up to the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) July chairmanship election, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), a candidate for the party's chairmanship, yesterday said yesterday that a dispute over party members' voting rights should be put to a vote.
"A proposal has already been made to the [KMT's] Central Standing Committee that party members who have not paid their party dues be allowed to vote in the July chairmanship elections," Wang said yesterday at the legislature.
"If negotiations on the issue are not successful, then the only way to resolve the situation is by voting on the issue," he added.
Wang was responding to the recent party dispute between himself and chairmanship candidate and Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The dispute relates to whether or not members of the KMT who have defaulted on membership fees should be allowed to vote in the chairmanship election. While Wang thinks they should be allowed, Ma and his supporters have been against it, as the move is seen favoring Wang's election chances.
Responding to Wang's suggestion yesterday, Ma said to reporters that he would not object to a vote on the issue.
However, more research must be done into the party member details before such a vote should be held, Ma said.
The KMT's organization and development committee is currently looking into the situation and will not be releasing a report on its findings until the end of April, Ma said. While it is estimated that the KMT has around 1,090,000 members, no one knows for sure what the actual number of members is and how many members have paid their party fees. An exact figure will be given when the report comes out, Ma said.
A decision on a vote should be made only after those figures are released, Ma added.
The KMT's chairmanship election will be held July 16.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods