Yesterday's meeting between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Substantive detail about the merger, and the possibility of Soong entering the Taipei mayoral election next year, were apparently not addressed during the four-hour closed-door meeting.
"We exchanged opinions on important issues, including the two parties' cooperation in the legislature, a nomination mechanism for city councilors and legislators, and the KMT-PFP merger plan," Soong said last night after leaving the meeting.
PHOTO: PATRICK LIN, AFP
Ma expressed gratitude for the "sincere and earnest" meeting, and said the conclusion of the meeting was "concrete and practical."
"We approved of what Chairman Soong said in the meeting, and we had a harmonious talk tonight ... I feel very optimistic about the future KMT-PFP relationship," he said.
While the two said they reached a general consensus on "making a stronger relationship" between the two parties, they declined to go into detail, and said further matters would be discussed by the two parties' secretaries-general.
PFP Secretary-General Chin Chin-sheng (秦金生) said more details would be discussed on the basis of "KMT-PFP cooperation."
"The two parties' secretaries-general will be responsible for discussing issues including Taipei and Kaohsiung city councilor elections ... Everything will be based on close cooperation between the KMT and PFP," he said last night.
Both parties declined to comment on whether "KMT-PFP cooperation" meant that no immediate merger plan had been decided on at the meeting.
Prior to the meeting, Soong had said the meeting would focus on "important issues" facing the two parties, as well as national policies, but not "personal issues."
"The PFP will keep no secrets from the KMT while discussing a KMT-PFP merger plan and national policies. I will not talk about anything regarding personal interests," Soong said yesterday before the meeting at Taipei Armed Forces Heroes House.
Ma expressed similar opinions, and hoped that the meeting would result in more KMT-PFP cooperation and a merger to fulfill the expectations of all pan-blue camp supporters.
"We understand pan-blue supporters' expectations for a KMT-PFP merger ... I hope tonight's meeting will be the beginning of many more talks on pan-blue cooperation and consolidation," he said.
More than two months after the first Ma-Soong meeting, the two chairmen's second meeting received much media attention. The two shook hands after arriving at the building, as each party's supporters shouted "Go! Go! Chairman Soong!" and "Go! Go! Chairman Ma!"
While the KMT is optimistic about the KMT-PFP merger and expects consolidation to be completed by the end of 2007, the PFP appears to be split on the issue.
PFP caucus whip Hwang Yih-jiau (
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:
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
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