Taipei’s two leading mayoral candidates yesterday urged the public to come out and vote despite forecasts of low temperatures on Election Day this Saturday.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who is running for re-election, said he expected cold weather would keep people at home, especially pan-blue supporters.
“I urge our supporters to come out and vote no matter what,” he said. “Your ballots will decide the political atmosphere in the future as well as Taipei City’s direction, cross-strait developments and the nation’s status.”
At a separate setting, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) also said that weather could play a role in Saturday’s turnout, and added that he hoped voters would have the passion to take action and vote.
Su, who has launched a drive to solicit 1,000 volunteers to each make 10 telephone calls to solicit votes, said that many might think Taipei has more pan-blue supporters than pan-green. However, he said as he was looking at the eyes of the people he shook hands with when he was canvassing for votes, he realized that people did not want to be categorized into any political camp or be bargaining chips for any political party.
“They want to be their own master,” Su said while visiting a market in Zhongshan District yesterday morning. “If they all come out and vote, they can help narrow the gap between the candidates and give us a chance to serve them. So, every ballot counts and the ballot in your hand spells your future for the next four years.”
Su said Taipei residents should use their ballots to tell the government whether they are satisfied with its performance over the past four years.
After talking to so many people and visiting so many areas, Su said he discovered that the city had not improved over the past four years and that residents had many complaints.
“I don’t have any burdens and I am good at solving problems, so why don’t you turn your anger into power and give me a chance to help you solve your problems?” Su asked.
Meanwhile, Hau’s spokespeople accused Su of not taking action when Taiwanese athletes were treated unfairly at international competitions when he was premier.
They were responding to accusations that the KMT government had failed to act in the controversial disqualification of taekwondo athlete Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君) at the Asian Games last week.
KMT Legislator Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) said the DPP did not care about the rights and interests of athletes or make any effort to protect Taiwan’s dignity when it was in power.
KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) urged the DPP to propose better alternatives if it thought the administration had handled the matter badly.
KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) said the DPP was a jealous opposition that criticizes anything it sees the KMT do right, adding that when the DPP sees the KMT make a mistake, it adds more blows to bring it down.
“Is dooming Taiwan and this country really what the DPP wants?” she asked.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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