Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) announced his intention to run the mayorship of Greater Kaohsiung yesterday, but a potential KMT rival questioned his loyalty to the party.
Chang, a former member of the People First Party (PFP), told a press conference at the legislature that he was entering the race to break the imbalance between northern and southern Taiwan.
The two-term legislator vowed to help the number of tourists to the city grow five fold to 5 million within four years if he became the KMT’s nominee and was elected in the year-end special municipality elections.
KMT legislators Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), Justin Chou (周守訓) and Wu Ching-chih (吳清池) and National Taiwan University philosophy professor Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), who once taught Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), all endorsed Chang at the press conference.
Wang said he would not support Chen unless she quits the Democratic Progressive Party.
Chang was the first KMT member to officially express an interest in running in the election. The KMT has had trouble finalizing a nominee for mayor of Greater Kaohsiung — the name of Kaohsiung City and county following their merger in December.
KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) said two weeks ago that the party would hold its primary opinion poll on April 14 and would not nominate any candidate from outside the city or county.
Another potential contender, KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), a six-term lawmaker from Kaohsiung City, questioned whether Chang was loyal to the KMT or the PFP.
Huang said she was not worried that Chang enjoyed the endorsement of the three legislators and Wang, adding that they were not as influential as senior Kaohsiung politicians like Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) or former Kaohsiung City Council speaker Chen Tien-mao (陳田錨).
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying