Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday to rally support for his party among overseas Taiwanese in the run up to the Nov. 27 mayoral elections in five special municipalities.
Speaking with reporters at his hotel, King, on the issue of incumbent Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing’s (楊秋興) decision to run for mayor of the Kaohsiung municipality as an independent, said it has added an element of uncertainty to the race, which might be in the KMT’s favor.
Yang, bucking the results of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) primaries, announced on Monday his decision to withdraw from the DPP and to run as an independent in the November Greater Kaohsiung mayoral election. Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) of the DPP, who also lost in the party’s primary, has previously said he would announce his decision in the coming days on whether he would follow in Yang’s footsteps and declare an independent bid for the mayoral race in Greater Tainan. Yang’s decision and Hsu’s comment have given rise to speculation that the DPP’s southern Taiwan strongholds could be breached.
On his US trip, King hailed the KMT’s candidates in Taipei, Sinbei and Taichung cities as being more capable than their DPP rivals to build a better life for the residents of those areas.
Earlier in the day, the DPP’s candidate for Taipei City, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), arrived in Los Angeles on the first leg of a five-day visit to seek support among overseas Taiwanese.
Back in Taipei, the DPP yesterday rebutted King’s accusation that the DPP Sinbei mayoral candidate, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), has failed to promise to complete her Sinbei City mayoral post if she wins the presidential election in 2012.
Criticizing King for having a double standard on the issue, Tsai’s deputy campaign chief Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said: “The KMT’s [Sinbei mayoral candidate] Eric Chu (朱立倫) left his public service posts three times before finishing his term when he previously held the positions of KMT legislator, Taoyuan County commissioner and vice premier.”
Additional reporting by Rich Chang
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS