Former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-min (辜寬敏) told reporters yesterday he strongly opposed any bid by former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) to take part in the year-end special municipality elections.
Amid signs of a deepening rift between the two, Koo, an influential figure in the pro-independence camp, said Hsieh should follow up on his promise to back out of politics.
“[Hsieh] lost the 2008 presidential election by more than 2 million votes … As a politician, one should know when to push and when to call a retreat,” Koo said.
Koo made the remarks during a luncheon organized by Taiwan Brain Trust, a think tank he heads.
While Hsieh has not publicly announced any desire to take part in the December elections, he has reportedly said that he would consider doing so if asked by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Party insiders have said that Hsieh’s offer is under consideration by a nomination team headed by DPP Secretary-General Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) charged with selecting party candidates.
Hsieh, the insiders said, could be considered for the Greater Taichung (a merger between Taichung City and County) race.
Representatives from Hsieh’s office yesterday said that Hsieh “respected” Koo’s opinions.
Meanwhile, Koo said he supported an announcement made by DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Wednesday that she would seek re-election as party chair in May.
“The best thing the DPP can do is re-elect her as DPP chair,” Koo said. “She has led the party from one election success to another.”
In response to a possible run for party chair by former Presidential Office secretary-general Mark Chen (陳唐山), Koo said he was confident Chen would not enter the race, adding that Chen would not likely dare run against Tsai.
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