Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (
Campaigning for KMT legislative candidates on the last Saturday before the elections, Wu warned people not to be manipulated again by the DPP's "dirty tricks."
"Chen will make a big move soon. He will be giving speeches that link the KMT with China and smear the party's reputation at campaigning events," Wu said yesterday when campaigning for KMT Legislator Lin Hung-chih (
PHOTO: MENG CHING-TZU, TAIPEI TIMES
"The KMT will not be defeated by any `dirty tricks' during the elections," he said.
Other KMT heavyweights, including KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former chairman Lien Chan (連戰), also spent the weekend campaigning for party candidates around the nation, calling on voters not to be overly optimistic about the outcome of the elections for the KMT.
"It's a tight election for the KMT and we can't take it [winning] for granted. We still need to work harder to attract votes," Ma said yesterday during a campaigning event in Changhua County.
Ma, Wu, Lien and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) later gathered at a campaign party at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium to promote party candidates, vowing to improve the nation's economy and people's livelihoods if the KMT regained power.
The KMT will hold another campaign party in Tainan City tonight, focusing its efforts on southern Taiwan.
KMT organization and development committee director Liao Fung-te (
In southern Taiwan, long considered a pan-green stronghold, Liao said the KMT would seek to grab at least seven of the total of 22 seats, with a goal of 12 seats.
In response to Chen's criticism of Lien for siding with China and boycotting the referendum ballots after pressure from Beijing, Lien said yesterday that linking the KMT with China was an "old trick" of the DPP and called on Chen not to spread rumors, while condemning the government for its failure to improve cross-strait relations.
"The existence of China is a reality and we cannot ignore it. Only by maintaining a peaceful cross-strait relationship can we create a win-win situation," Lien said yesterday while campaigning in Tainan.
Lien said he did not oppose the referendums, but that he was against the DPP's attempt to influence the election outcome by combining referendums with the elections.
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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POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the