Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-cheng (鄺麗貞) yesterday lost in her attempt to secure the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nomination after she was defeated in the party primary by KMT Legislator Justin Huang (黃健庭).
Huang won 45.6 percent to Kuang’s 37.1 percent after the result of a party member vote was combined with that of a telephone poll, meaning Huang will represent the party in the county commissioner election scheduled for December.
Kuang won the member vote, beating Huang and the other hopeful, Taitung County Council Vice Speaker Rao Ching-ling (饒慶玲), but received only 25 percent of the telephone poll vote, while Huang won mroe than 54 percent.
The final results were determined by a combination of the vote and the opinion poll, with the poll accounting for 70 percent and the vote accounting for 30 percent.
Kuang did not make any statements about the result.
Kuang stirred controversy and drew widespread criticism last year for failing to cancel a 13-day trip to Europe ahead of a typhoon. The KMT suspended her party rights last August, but restored them later in December.
She accused Huang of smearing her reputation via text messages earlier this month and threatened to withdraw from the party and join the election as an independent candidate, but later agreed to compete with Huang and Rao in the primary.
Meanwhile, Tainan City Councilor Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介), a KMT member, won the party primary in the city yesterday over rival National Cheng Kung University professor Ting Jen-fang (丁仁方), meaning Hsieh will represent the party in the year-end Tainan mayoral election.
The KMT has completed the primary process in most cities and counties, but will delay it in Taipei County, Taoyuan County, Taichung City, Taichung County, Tainan County and Pingtung County because the six cities and counties could be approved for status upgrade.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software