Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday openly declared his support for Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), one of the contenders for the party's top post.
Handing a baseball bat to Wu as a symbol of transfer of power, Ma shrugged off questions about fairness in publicly favoring Wu over another candidate, KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱). Lauding Wu for his experience in party affairs and capability in pushing for party unity if elected as KMT chairman, Ma said he should be free to support any person as he did not hold any party position now.
"I've been waiting for a moment like this, to return his favors all these year ... Wu is an affectionate and righteous man, and a great leader that the KMT needs at a critical time like this," Ma said during a campaigning event for Wu at Yue Yang Restaurant.
Wu served as Ma's campaign director and helped him win in the Taipei mayoral elections in 1998 and 2002.
Holding the baseball bat together with Ma to symbolize party unity and their joint efforts, Wu stressed the importance of cooperation between Ma and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"The Wang-Ma cooperation is crucial for the KMT to win the 2008 presidential election, so let's press them on to achieve this goal. I don't care about your personal gains and losses, I only care about the future of Taiwan," Wu said.
Citing the consensus reached by the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) four presidential aspirants not to violate party regulations or leave the party, nor to run as an independent if they were not picked as the party's representative, Wu urged Ma, Wang and party members to unite to win the election.
"I would be an aggressive party chairman who would allow no defeat. The KMT has to cooperate and join forces so that we can win the elections," he said.
In response to Wu's remarks, Ma said he had already promised to follow Wu's suggestion that he invite Wang to be his running mate if he were chosen as the KMT's presidential candidate.
The KMT chairman by-election will be held on April 7. Ma resigned from the post after his indictment on corruption charges in relation to alleged misuses of his mayoral allowance.
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