The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is considering altering its “single consecutive term” regulation to allow Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to stay in the legislature for another term.
Wang has been a legislator-at-large for two terms, the maximum allowed an appointed lawmaker under the party’s rules. This means that he would have to win an elected seat in the next legislative election to remain as speaker.
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that top KMT officials were considering amending the party’s nomination regulations to “bail out” Wang, and more importantly, defuse a possible battle for the party’s nomination for vice president next year.
The United Daily News said sources had told it that the amendment would also allow Wang to remain as chairman of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, an organization launched under the previous Democratic Progressive Party government to consolidate democracy in Taiwan and around the world.
Wang said he had “no knowledge of the reported plan to change the KMT nomination rules.”
Wang is considered one of the top contenders to run on the KMT’s ticket with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is expected to run for re-election.
KMT Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said Wang “was one of the prestigious political leaders in Taiwan” and an “appropriate arrangement” for his future would be in the interest of the KMT ahead of the next presidential election.
The KMT will make a decision on the matter, “the sooner the better,” Ting said.
The last time Wang faced the electorate was in 2001, when it was far easier to win a legislative seat because constituencies elected more than one representative to the Legislative Yuan.
At the time, all he needed was 10 percent of the popular vote in his Kaohsiung County constituency (which is now part of Greater Kaohsiung) to get elected.
Now, the legislative poll is a winner-takes-all system, which would leave Wang potentially vulnerable in Greater Kaohsiung, which is a DPP stronghold.
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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