Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday that an internal struggle among aspiring candidates for the year-end special municipality elections would be “the biggest nightmare” for the party.
Elections for the mayors and councilors of the five special municipalities — Taipei City, an upgraded Taipei County and the merged cities and counties of Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung — will be held in December.
As the heads of Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County and Tainan City and Tainan County are all DPP members, all four are seen as front-runners for the two top jobs in the soon-to-be-merged municipalities.
During an interview with Happy Radio yesterday morning, Tsai called on the party hopefuls to exercise restraint and to focus on assisting colleagues in winning in the Feb. 27 legislative by-elections.
The party may have won the three legislative by-elections on Jan. 9, she said, but she worries that DPP members and supporters had become complacent ahead of next month’s elections.
She said the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enjoyed good support in these districts, so it was a big challenge for the party to win on Feb. 27.
Tsai also rejected speculation that the party was thinking of inviting celebrity designer Demos Chiang (蔣友柏), the great-grandson of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), to help with the party’s campaign in the year-end elections.
“I have not heard it, and it is impossible,” Tsai said, adding that the party should not have people with different political leanings take charge of its campaigns.
Media reports said many young DPP members had suggested that Chiang be put in charge of DPP propaganda for the year-end polls.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said young people liked Chiang’s work, and it would be a new challenge for Chiang to use his creativity in political campaigns.
It would also be a new experience for the DPP to use Chiang, Huang said.
DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said he supported the idea of recruiting Chiang, adding: “We should consider his capability, not his family background.”
DPP Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩) said she opposed the idea because the party might lose some votes from DPP supporters if it used Chiang.
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
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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