Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) yesterday declined to comment on how the party would nominate the candidates for December’s five special municipality elections, but said that vocal aspirants would not necessarily get preferential treatment.
At the end of the year, Taipei County will become a directly administered city called Sinbei City (新北市), while Taichung City and County, Tainan City and County and Kaohsiung City and County will be merged into directly administered cities, in accordance with a decision by the Executive Yuan last year at the request of the cities and counties concerned.
King said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who doubles as KMT chairman, wanted the party and administration to listen to the voices of the people and reclaim voter support through sound performance.
“Election planning is like a chess game,” he said. “We must take it one step at a time. There is no guarantee for nomination just because the person interested in the race is boisterous.”
King made the remarks in response to questions about a comment by County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) in Taipei County yesterday morning.
Chou said all elections must be based on public opinion and that he and KMT headquarters had reached a tacit agreement that the selection of candidates would be carried out by opinion polls.
If the polls showed he was not the candidate with the best chances of winning, Chou said he would support the leading candidate in the surveys. If he was in the lead, on the other hand, he hoped his rivals would support him, he said.
King, who attended a function with Chou, said he recognized Chou’s efforts in governing the county and interacting with the party.
“He is a loyal party member who has the support of many people,” he said.
Asked whether his remarks were an endorsement of Chou’s bid to run for Sinbei City, King did not give a direct answer, but said Chou had been working hard and his efforts deserved recognition.
As Chou’s approval rating has continued to drop, speculation is rife that the KMT is considering nominating someone else.
Meanwhile, King yesterday said he recruited Ryan Wu (吳睿穎), former chief operating officer of 1111 Job Bank, to help him better manage the party’s human resources.
King said Wu had a “special mission” at his new position and hoped Wu would “do more and say less.”
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:
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