Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday dismissed a report that he would run in next year's presidential election as an independent should the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) revise its platform to ensure former chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) presidential candidacy.
"Don't blabber," Wang said when asked to respond to a story in yesterday's Chinese-language United Daily News.
The newspaper quoted anonymous sources as saying that Wang would register as an independent in October.
Wang said that his decision to sit out the KMT primary should not be "over explained."
"I have not said that I will run for president. For the sake of party unity, I did not take part in the primary so that Ma would become the sole party candidate. That was proof of my sincerity to the party ... I have done what I should do. It's inappropriate to over explain," Wang said.
The KMT repealed its "black-gold exclusion clause" -- which suspended a person's membership if he or she were indicted -- after Ma was indicted on corruption charges. The party is also expected to relax regulations that bar members convicted of a crime from being a party candidate.
Meanwhile, Ma reiterated yesterday that he would invite Wang to run on the KMT ticket for next year's presidential poll.
Ma said he would not refuse to negotiate with Wang, but since he has picked up a candidate registration form, he would try to surpass the minimum number of signatures needed -- 16,750 -- to complete the registration process.
He declined to comment on whether he thought Wang would run as an independent.
Former acting KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (
He said the KMT would try to coordinate between Ma and Wang.
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