Supporters of Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (?]) were still adamant that the two-term Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mayor would announce an independent bid before the end of the month despite missing a predicted deadline yesterday.
Head of the Friends of Hsu Tain-tsair organization Liao Wen-chen (廖文振), who is said to be close to Hsu, had previously said Hsu would announce his entry into the Greater Tainan race by yesterday at the latest. He yesterday said Hsu would make a formal announcement to the effect either tomorrow or on Aug. 27.
Hsu is said to be unhappy with his loss to DPP Legislator William Lai (賴清德) in May in the party primaries, which Hsu thought were biased and unfair. Results of the primary sparked outrage among Hsu’s supporters who have said the 59-year old deserved another term.
Liao said his group had already gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition urging Hsu to run and had finished printing campaign advertisements and clothing for supporters.
In the past week, the group had also created a number of local chapters in townships and villages throughout Tainan County.
On Friday, it issued an open letter calling on supporters to drop their support for both the DPP and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates and instead shore up Hsu’s potential re-election bid.
At a separate setting yesterday, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) downplayed the chance of another party split in a campaign stop, saying: “We are on top of the situation and it is under discussion.”
However, she said she could not speak “too much on the issue because everything is still being handled.”
Speculation on Hsu’s future with the party comes just days after Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) defected from the DPP to announce an independent bid for Greater Kaohsiung mayor. Yang was also dissatisfied with losing the party primaries.
Sources in the DPP said that a number of senior party officials and DPP elders would continue to travel to Tainan to meet with Hsu this week. The list could include Tsai and former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃).
Lai said that he believed Hsu would not break away from the DPP and announce a separate bid, based on his “feeling of responsibility to Taiwan.”
“We sincerely hope that he will be able to stay and continue to work with us,” Lai said.
Hsu could not be reached for a comment by press time yesterday.
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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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