Saying that he was registering under the encouragement of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) formally signed up for the party's chairmanship election yesterday.
Accompanied by supporters holding posters reading "Wang Jin-pyng is the most capable," Wang went to KMT headquarters in Taipei yesterday morning to register for the July 16 election.
His registration came as a something of a surprise, given his long-standing position that he would not formally enter the race until it was clear that Lien would not run for another term.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Wang said he had changed his mind on Monday after talking briefly to Lien at party headquarters while Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"Chairman Lien used a firm tone of voice to encourage me to enter the chairmanship election. While he did not clearly say that he will not enter the election, it was his encouragement that convinced me to enter," Wang told reporters yesterday.
Today is the last day to register as a candidate.
Wang said that he anticipates a "gentlemanly competition" between himself and Ma and that he and Ma will cooperate to enlarge the KMT's support base.
To register his candidacy, Wang submitted a petition with the signatures of more than 100,000 KMT members.
Party bylaws stipulate that the signatures of just 3 percent of the KMT's members are necessary to enter the chairmanship election.
However, both the Wang and Ma camps have competed in recent weeks to collect the greatest number of signatures.
While Ma had 82,000 signatures on his petition at the time of his registration on Monday, his campaign office released a notice yesterday afternoon that the figure had climbed to more than 110,000.
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:
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