Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had little chance of making a clean sweep of the 17 seats up for grabs in the Dec. 5 elections for county commissioners and city mayors.
Wu, the former KMT secretary-general, made the comments in Hualien while President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) led party officials and Central Standing Committee (CSC) members in campaigning for Hualien County commissioner candidate Tu Li-hua (杜麗華) yesterday.
Later on, during the CSC meeting, Wu said that if the KMT could hold on to Nantou, Changhua and the counties and cities north of them, the party could view that as a victory.
He said that the four counties of Yilan, Hsinchu, Pingtung and Chiayi were the most important and that the party would be attacking and defending in equal measure.
Wu also said that he would take responsibility for any failure in the elections, as the candidates were all nominated during his tenure as part secretary-general.
Wu became premier three months ago.
BATTLES
Earlier in the day, Wu said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) faced considerable difficulties in putting forth viable candidates in cities and counties where the KMT had a strong base, adding that the DPP’s only hope in those places was to try and team up with peripheral forces from the pan-blue camp.
The KMT faced a similar uphill struggle in localities where the pan-green forces were strong, so the party could not afford to be complacent, Wu said.
Ma will preside over four other CSC meetings in central and southern Taiwan ahead of the elections to raise support for KMT candidates.
HSIEH
Meanwhile, former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday that the DPP should be able to win seven seats.
Campaigning for DPP candidates in Pingtung County, Hsieh said the DPP should be able to hold on to Yunlin, Pingtung and Chiayi counties and win four seats, including one in Ilan County.
Some areas under DPP administration are not featuring in the elections as they are set to become special municipalities administered directly under the central government and will hold elections next year.
Standing alongside Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻), Hsieh said that the government’s recent policies regarding the import of bone-in US beef have hurt Taiwan’s beef industry.
He advised voters to boycott Ma’s KMT over his failed policies and called on Ma to “resolve the problem of US beef instead of only worrying about elections.”
Council of Agriculture officials said yesterday that the controversial US bone-in beef would begin arriving “in the next few days.”
PRESIDENTIAL BID
In response to questions regarding who would represent the DPP for presidential elections in 2012, Hsieh said that for the moment the focus should be on the local elections.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods