The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday initiated a series of events celebrating the one-year anniversary of party Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (
In the first of these, former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (
The KMT also decided to seek advice from other politicians and prominent people in a forum to be held at the end of the month, and to publish a booklet on Ma's accomplishments during the past year.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Hsu said in his speech that Ma should not "neglect Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"If I were Chairman Ma, I would never neglect Speaker Wang ... If Wang were to leave the KMT, it would be very difficult [for Ma] to win the 2008 presidential election," Hsu said.
The new "single-district, two-vote" system, which will reduce the number of legislative seats from 225 to 113 after the legislative election next year, has created an overlap in Wang's and KMT Vice Chairman Lin Yi-shih's (
With the KMT planning to nominate Lin in the district while naming Wang as the party's first choice as legislator-at-large, Wang has promised to campaign for Lin, while declining to make clear whether or not he would accept the party's arrangement for him.
KMT Vice Chairman Wu Po-hsiung (
"We five vice chairmen can all quit and let Wang be the only KMT vice chairman if he wants," he said.
Ma said he had the "highest respect" for Wang's opinions.
"I am not just saying it. I always ask Speaker Wang for advice," he said.
Meanwhile, the KMT's handling of the resignation of former KMT spokeswoman Cheng Li-wen (鄭麗文) came under fire yesterday as committee members Jason Hu (胡志強) and Chen Ting-yun (陳釘雲) expressed their support for Cheng.
"As a spokeswoman whose job it is to interact with the media, it's necessary to think or say something outside the box ... Party members should back her up," Hu said.
Chen also accused the party of being "unreasonable" and "harsh" by asking Cheng to move out of the house in which a business tycoon had allowed her to live.
"The housing issue is a problem that concerns her personal life, but instead of talking to her privately, the party's disciplinary committee told her to move out," he said.
Ma, who accepted Cheng's resignation on Sunday, said he would give their comments all due consideration.
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