The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration should reflect on whether its policies are in line with public opinion, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, a day after its party swept all three seats in legislative by-elections in Taoyuan, Taichung and Taitung counties.
During a visit to Yunlin County, Tsai said the by-election wins were not a victory for the DPP but rather the voters giving Taiwan’s democracy justice.
She said the results would strengthened the public’s confidence in Taiwan’s democratic development, while giving the KMT an opportunity to reflect on and examine whether its policies have gone awry and are out of line with the views of Taiwanese.
The year-end elections for mayors of five special municipalities will be even more crucial for the DPP, and the party will go all out to win, Tsai said.
The DPP will hold a provisional national convention on Jan. 24 to form rules and processes for nominating the party’s candidates in the five special municipality races, she said, adding that everything related to the nominating process has gone according to schedule.
The issue was open to discussion but hopes party members would desist from too much speculation in order to avoid unnecessary disputes, she said. The party should focus its efforts on four legislative by-elections scheduled for Feb. 27 in Hualien, Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Chiayi counties, she said.
Tsai said she would make good use of the party’s 30 legislative seats to fully carry out the party’s opposition role as a check on the power of the ruling KMT.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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