Finalizing his candidacy, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday submitted forms to enter the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) July 16 chairmanship election.
Speaking at the KMT's headquarters in Taipei where he registered his candidacy yesterday morning, Ma said he anticipated the chairmanship election would be a "competition of gentlemen."
Ma said all the chairmanship hopefuls were comrades and would work together after the election was held.
PHOTO: SOONG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"The KMT will not be divided. Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
In an impressive show, the petition coordinated by the Ma camp to endorse his candidacy had around 82,000 signatures on it, giving him the support of around 8 percent of the party's members for his campaign. According to KMT regulations, chairmanship hopefuls must collect the signatures of at least 3 percent of party members in order to enter the election.
Representatives for Ma's opponent, Wang, have said that they hope to submit a petition with support from at least 5 percent of party members.
When asked by reporters when he would register his candidacy, Wang said that he would do so "right away." Wang later confirmed that he would head to party headquarters today to register.
Wang had previously said he would register his candidacy when he was sure that incumbent Chairman Lien Chan (
While Lien has said in the past that he had no wish to contest the election, a grassroots movement calling for him to continue in the post has led to speculation over whether he would do so.
Wang has said repeatedly that in the event of a Lien candidacy, he would drop out of the chairmanship election to support Lien.
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:
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