Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰), yesterday denied that he would represent the party in the Taipei County commissioner election at the end of this year.
Sean Lien stressed that he would focus his current efforts on leading the company and would not leave the position he took up last year.
“I want to use this chance to reassure my colleagues and the public that I will not leave the position now. My current priority is to lead the company and present solid achievements,” he said yesterday after attending a bike-rental service ceremony in Taipei City.
With Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) suffering low approval ratings in several polls, there have been calls within the KMT for Sean Lien, a rising star in the KMT, to enter the year-end race instead.
In response to criticism from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) about Chou’s performance and the party’s alleged plan to have former DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) enter the race, Sean Lien defended the commissioner, adding that he would support the KMT’s candidate in the election.
KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) yesterday also denied that Sean Lien was the party’s choice for the election, and said the party would finalize its candidates for the year-end elections through primaries.
“The KMT has no presumptive candidates for the year-end elections, as we will determine the candidates through a fair mechanism,” he said.
Wu said that although there were different voices within the party, the KMT would insist on finalizing the party candidates via primaries to meet public expectations.
“The primary mechanism represents the progress of the KMT’s democratization, and those who participate in the primaries should follow the regulations,” Wu said.
It would be regressive for the party to designate candidates, he added.
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