Extending its congratulations to Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"For the purposes of national development and the people's well-being, [we] hope Ma would make an effort to help realize the president's push for reconciliation between the ruling and opposition parties as well as cooperation among all political parties," the Presidential Office said in a statement last night following the KMT headquarters' announcement that Ma had won a landslide victory in the KMT's unprecedented two-way chairmanship race.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) also congratulated Ma last night on his victory and expressed the hope that a new era of benign competition between political parties would now dawn.
Su said yesterday's election was a "breakthrough" for the KMT and "a delightful event ... where the party was able to transform from its past role of oppressing Taiwan's democracy to marching in step with the nation's democracy."
"I hope the KMT, under Ma's leadership, will be a loyal opposition party and engage in rational political competition with the DPP," Su said in response to media queries about comments concerning the KMT's new chairman.
"A party should do what a party has to do and should not oppose everything for the mere sake of opposition, leaving the government operating like a turning wheel going nowhere," Su said. He was in Pingtung County yesterday campaigning for former DPP legislator Tsao Chi-hung's (曹啟鴻) candidacy in the year-end mayoral and county commissioner elections.
Saying that the DPP respected the KMT's practice of democratic election within the party, Su said that although there had been conflict throughout the campaign period between Ma's camp and that of the other candidate, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Yesterday's election, with more than one candidate running for the party's highest position, was the first of its kind in the KMT's 110-year history.
In past chairmanship elections, there was always only one candidate and the candidate was voted to the leadership position by either the amount of applause from party members or votes cast by the party's central committee representatives.
As of press time, no comments on the election had been made by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). While TSU Chairman Su Chin-chiang (
Ho said that the KMT's new leader should display a style different from that of the incumbent chairman, Lien Chan (
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,