Green Party Taiwan (GPT) has nominated former party secretary-general Calvin Wen (溫炳原) for the legislative byelection in Taipei City's sixth constituency, vowing to bring its green platform and to raise environmental awareness in the legislature.
The byelection will be held on March 28 following the resignation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) earlier last month over allegations that she holds dual citizenship. The US Department of State recently confirmed that Lee's US citizenship is still valid. The Nationality Act (國籍法) bans government officials from holding dual citizenship.
“We wanted to nominate someone who can represent us well. We selected Wen because he had been involved with GPT since its founding in 1996, so he has a good grasp of the international Green [parties] and how to connect with them,” GPT Secretary-General Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said yesterday.
PHOTO: CNA
Wen said the main thread in his campaign policy was to transform Taiwan's economy into a green one.
“By collecting carbon taxes and capping carbon emissions, public transportation systems will be made more efficient and there will be fewer private cars on the road,” he said.
“Although GPT will only have one seat in the legislature [if elected], I will be the people's eyes and ears in the legislature. I will report to my voters any under-the-table deals,” he said.
Wen's nomination came as a surprise, as GPT had said it would choose a nominee from three potential candidates — Pan, US-born naturalized Taiwanese Robin Winkler (文魯彬) and the party's founding member Chang Shu-mei (張淑玫).
Winkler's announcement that he would bid for GPT's nomination had drawn wide attention, with the Chinese-language media portraying him as the “opposite” of Lee. However, the Nationality Act states that a naturalized Taiwanese cannot run for public office until at least 10 years after his or her naturalization. Winkler was naturalized in 2003.
Asked if Winkler knew that he was not eligible to enter the election, Pan yesterday said: “[Winkler] thinks that there is room [to work with].”
When asked to elaborate, Pan said Winkler could look into the law and obtain candidacy as an independent candidate through registration and appeal.
When telephoned for confirmation, Winkler said: “Yes, I have not given up yet.”
In related news, although the Central Election Commission (CEC) revoked Lee's elected status as Taipei City councilor and legislator, it will not ask her to return election subsidies she received for the elections.
The election law states that a candidate who receives more than a certain number of votes in an election is eligible to receive NT$30 for each vote he or she receives. Having been elected as Taipei City councilor in 1994 and as legislator in 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2008, Lee had received more than NT$8.6 million (US$251,000) in election subsidies.
“Unlike the President and Vice President Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), the Election and Recall Act for Public Servants (公職人員選舉罷免法) only requires the elected person to give up foreign citizenship before taking the oath of office,” the CEC said in a statement released late on Tuesday. “Having foreign citizenship, according to the law, does not block anyone from running in the election, and thus the CEC would still compensate the candidate.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LOA IOK-SIN
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift