People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday dismissed media speculation that he would rejoin the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after leaving the party seven years ago.
A story in yesterday's Chinese-language United Daily News quoted an anonymous KMT source as saying that Soong was seriously considering the possibility of returning following the KMT and PFP's completion of the coordination of their district legislative nominations.
The source said Soong and KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄) have been in close contact with each other recently and have a certain implicit agreement on Soong rejoining the KMT, although neither of them have officially discussed the possibility.
Considering that six PFP legislators will run in next year's legislative poll on behalf of the KMT and that the two parties will nominate legislators-at-large together, the KMT and PFP have already in reality merged, which has left Soong with no other choice, another senior anonymous KMT source was quoted as saying in the article.
When approached by reporters at a memorial service, Soong said he could not understand why the United Daily News printed the story.
"The United Daily News always reports false news," he said. "In the past, it has launched personal attacks [against me]. Now it goes as far as reporting things that are far from the truth while at the same time urging the pan-blue camp to integrate," he said.
Soong said the newspaper should instead urge the KMT to detail its standpoints on issues such as joining the UN and the government's "desinicization" campaign or the public would all suffer from "schizophrenia."
Soong withdrew from the KMT to run as an independent in the presidential race in 2000 and established the PFP on March 31 the same year after losing in the election.
The KMT's presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), said a merger is the direction in which the two parties are heading.
"The KMT's door is always open," he said.
"After Wu became chairman, one of his ideals was to make as many friends as possible," said Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓), a spokesman for the KMT. "We respect and welcome an ally like Chairman Soong."
PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) said the rumor had been started by PFP lawmakers in an effort to secure the KMT's legislator-at-large nominations.
"They are eager to secure the nominations so that they started the rumor with the aim of showing loyalty to the KMT," Liu said without naming any names.
If the merger of the PFP and the KMT takes place before the coming legislative election, scheduled for Jan. 12 next year, the PFP would lose its legislator-at-large seats as well as its election grant.
Under the election grant system, each candidate is subsidized NT$30 for each ballot that exceeds one-third of the votes sufficient to win in the respective single-seat constituency, and political parties receive subsidies of NT$50 for each ballot exceeding 5 percent of the total number of valid votes.
PFP Legislator Lee Fu-tien (李復甸) said that the party members who spread the rumor were thinking only about themselves and had disregarded the party's interests.
"Chairman Soong has said many times that he is open to the possibility of a KMT-PFP merger and the party is still soliciting opinions. It's a pity that some people are in a hurry to make it happen so that they can run in the legislative election as part of the KMT," Lee said.
The report said PFP Legislator Feng Ting-kuo (馮定國) recently visited former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) to arrange the details of Soong's return. Feng was unavailable for comment yesterday.
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