Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that immediate action should be taken to deal with the scandal over rampant bribery during the recent Central Standing Committee (CSC) election.
“Speculation about election bribery has clouded the party’s reputation and we need to address this issue immediately and change the situation,” Ma said as he campaigned for the party’s nominee in the Kinmen County Commissioner election, Lee Wuo-shih (李沃士), on Kinmen yesterday morning.
It was Ma’s first public response to the bribery allegations and to a wave of resignations from CSC members who said they were stepping down to force the party to hold a new election.
However, it is believed that Ma was behind the resignations of almost all the CSC members, as a by-election could only be organized when enough CSC members have resigned to ensure that the committee — the party’s highest decision-making body — no longer has enough members to function.
The KMT has called a CSC by-election for Nov. 14, even though two committee members are refusing to quit their seats: KMT Taipei City Councilor Li Keng Kuei-fang (厲耿桂芳) and Taipei County Council Speaker Chen Hsin-ching (陳幸進).
The rest of the committee had resigned by Saturday amid accusations of widespread vote-buying in the Oct. 11 election.
The party said yesterday that it was considering centralizing all voting booths in Taipei for the by-election to prevent vote buying.
Li Keng and Chen, however, continued to raise doubts yesterday about the legitimacy of the resignations by the other committee members.
“I think a by-election should be called by Chairman Ma. I cherish the election certificate issued by the party and a by-election initiated by CSC members is not legitimate,” Li Keng said.
She said she didn’t feel that was resigning was necessary.
However, she said would cooperate with whatever the final decision is made during the committee’s meeting today.
Chen, on the other hand, insisted on his innocence and said that pressuring all the CSC members to resign was an insult to members who were not involved in vote buying.
“It is not legitimate for the party and society to pressure the elected members to resign. I will respect the party’s final decision, but I will not offer my resignation,” he said.
Ma will finalize the date for the new election and the voting system during tonight’s provisional CSC meeting.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS