The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday approved its legislator-at-large list of candidates as well as some district legislators amid questions over several controversial figures.
Among the 28 legislator-at-large candidates, DPP Legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌) was indicted for her involvement in an alleged loan scandal at Sunny Bank (陽信商銀).
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (
For his part, former DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun was indicted on charges of forgery and embezzlement over allegations of misuse of his "special allowance fund" during his term as premier.
Asked whether the controversial nominees would have a negative impact on the elections, Presidential Office Secretary-General Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) said yesterday that the candidates had been picked in accordance with the party's nomination process and approved by the Central Executive Committee.
DPP Deputy Secretary-General Liu Chien-hsin (劉建忻) said that indictment and conviction were not the same thing and urged the public to use the same standards when judging the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates.
"KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been indicted on graft charges and a KMT candidate for legislator-at-large is still serving time in jail," Liu said, referring to KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), who is serving a 14-month prison term for violent conduct during a protest in front of the Kaohsiung District Court following the 2004 presidential election.
Yu avoided the question yesterday, saying it was not part of his plan to be a legislator-at-large and that he respected the party's selection mechanism.
Six more legislator-at-large candidates will be selected by the party's nomination committee. Among the 28 candidates already selected, 15 are women and 13 are men. The party said 12 to 15 candidates were on the "safe list."
The committee also agreed to recruit non-DPP members -- former KMT member Lee Sen-zong (李顯榮), former Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Liao Pen-yen (廖本煙), former TSU Legislator Huang Chung-yung (黃宗源) and independent Taipei County Councilor Chen Yong-fu (陳永福) -- to run in the legislative election.
The committee approved the nomination of Chen Hsiu-hui (
The committee also resolved to support the proposal of holding legislative and presidential elections in tandem with referendums and collecting election and referendum ballots together.
Meanwhile, President Chen Shui-bian (
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