Former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said his plan to run in Taipei City on the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ticket remains unchanged despite talks from former presidential advisor Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) asking him to reconsider.
Koo ran a half-page advertisement yesterday in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) calling on Su to drop his bid in Taipei City and instead run in Sinbei City — Taipei County’s name once it is upgraded — against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Vice-Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫).
“Taipei County residents elected him to two terms as Taipei County Commissioner. Su is best positioned to understand the problems of these people and as a politician, he has a responsibility to step up when people need him to,” Koo said in a press conference yesterday.
PHOTO: CNA
Left unsaid was that Su also holds the DPP’s best chances going up against Chu, who is also riding high in opinion polls according to surveys, released in March. In the same ad, Koo also called on DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to run in Taipei City against incumbent KMT mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌).
However, the requests were firmly rebuffed by Su who said in a separate setting yesterday that he had decided to run in Taipei City since March 3, the date he first publicly announced his candidacy.
While Tsai did not make a public comment on the issue, she has said previously that she did not plan on taking part in the special municipality elections in November.
Despite having already selected its candidates for Greater Kaohsiung and Greater Tainan, the DPP has yet to finalize its list for Taipei and Sinbei as well as Greater Taichung. The nomination list is expected to be released Wednesday next week but party officials added the date could be pushed back if the team were unable to come to a conclusion.
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical