Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"The party is facing a life-and-death situation now," Wang said. "If a wrong person is chosen to take the party helm, I'm afraid there won't be any future for the party."
Wang said that the KMT can only resume power by adopting Chiang's policy line and that if elected, he would guarantee a win of half of the total seats in the year-end election of city mayors and county commissioners, or shoulder political responsibility for failing to make good on the promise.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
About 130 retired military generals attended a tea party organized by the Wang camp at the legislative compound yesterday morning.
They included former president of National Defense University Cheng Pan-chi (
Also present was KMT Legislator John Chiang (
Desperate to shake off the impression that he is a follower of Lee Teng-hui's (
"Many have categorized me as a follower of Lee, but if I were, I wouldn't have ended up getting zero support from the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) in February's legislative speakership election," he said.
In addition to committing himself to following the Chiang Ching-kuo policy line, Wang yesterday reiterated his platform of retaining the national title. He also repeated the wish to see a gentlemanly competition with his rival, Ma.
His camp, however, submitted "evidence" of alleged vote-buying by the Ma camp to the party's election supervision committee, following a similar move made by the Ma camp on Wednesday.
Wang yesterday outlined the "plight" caused by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration since it came to power in 2000, and depicted five tasks he would dedicate himself to if elected. In addition to depleting state coffers, Wang said, the DPP government's economic policies have blunted the nation's economic edge, while its election strategies have incited ethnic divisions and its cross-strait policies have pushed both sides to the brink of military confrontation.
To solve all the problems, Wang said that the KMT must resume power. If elected, Wang said that party reform would top the agenda.
He also vowed to integrate the plan-blue camp because only through unity can guarantee triumph in the year-end city mayor and county commissioner election and eventually in the 2008 presidential election.
Wang also insinuated that his rival lacks political ethics, because Ma had announced his election bid before KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
"I did not register for the election until June 7, one day after Ma signed up for the election and Chairman Lien told me to hurry up to register," Wang said.
In addition to the backing of retired generals, KMT senior heavyweights Lee Huan (
KMT Legislator Lee Chin-hua (
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