Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday accused "certain people" of trying to tamper with his election campaign.
Hau made the comments after two scheduled press conferences floundered and were canceled.
Hau canceled a planned press conference at the Songshan Airport on Wednesday after the aviation police said no press conferences were permitted there.
Yesterday, thirty minutes before another planned press conference at the Jhong Jheng People Sports Center, Hau was forced to cancel the event due to complaints from swimmers, campaign spokesman Yang Hsiao-tung (羊曉東) said.
Hau relocated the second press conference to his campaign headquarters. The purpose of the event was to promote a campaign commercial entitled Swimming.
The commercial focused on his policy to establish more sports centers to encourage residents to exercise more.
Hau appeared to be entertaining a conspiracy theory about the activities' cancelation.
"We applied to the authorities to conduct the press conferences, but things happened at the last minute and forced us to cancel ? Anyone can go find out what happen and decide for themselves if certain people tried to manipulate the election," Hau said.
Swimming
Later yesterday afternoon, Hau returned to the swimming center and, as he prepared to demonstrate his skills in the pool, was confronted by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) who mocked him for his failed attempts to conduct press conferences.
Hau declined to comment on the matter and went swimming.
Meanwhile DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Frank Hsieh (
His advertisement promoted a proposal for Taipei to host the 2020 Olympic Games.
At the press conference, Hsieh said that the proposal has always been his goal, even before he joined the election campaign.
"Applying for the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games would give Taiwanese a common dream and extend the nation's visibility in the international community," Hsieh told reporters at his campaign headquarters.
Meanwhile, Independent Taipei mayoral candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) showed the media two gold coins that he said his mother had given him.
The two gold coins were given to Soong's parents as a subsidy by the former KMT government when they fled to Taiwan from China with the KMT, Soong said.
Soong said his family abided by the rules and lived in the housing provided by the government, rather than using the gold coins to buy property.
DPP legislators have accused Hau's father of abusing the military-provided housing system.
In order to avoid DPP accusations, Soong yesterday claimed that his parents, who also lived in government housing, did so according to the regulations.
"My mother told me that they didn't buy a house because the government had given them a place. They did not occupy the place illegally. It was the government's policy," he said while visiting Muzha District.
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
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