Chinese Nationalist Party honorary chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) was recommended by a group of pan-blue organizations as their preferred candidate to team up with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to run in next year’s presidential race, the group said at a press conference.
Next in line on their list of recommendations are Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), World Congress of Cultures president Kenneth Fan (范光陵) told a press conference held with other pan-blue organizations in Taipei yesterday.
“The most important thing is calling people to come out and vote,” Fan added.
“For the future of the Chinese nation (中華民族), [we] must win 2012 [presidential election] or else it would be unimaginable,” Fan said.
Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) has previously said that he would serve only one term.
Ma, 60, has indicated he would seek a second term.
So far, there have been no signs that anyone within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would try to challenge Ma, who also doubles as the party chairman.
Ma has begun to prepare for his re-election bid and plans to open his campaign office in mid-May, KMT sources said
Former KMT secretary--general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), a confidant of Ma, is expected to head the campaign team and work with the party to boost support for Ma in southern Taiwan, traditionally a Democratic Progressive Party stronghold.
Ma last month hosted a series of luncheons for people who had contributed to his 2008 campaign White Paper and who had worked on the campaign team.
At the events, guests discussed the content of a new campaign White Paper.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,