Surrounded by hundreds of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party delegates and local party members, at a campaign event yesterday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) declared his intention to seek re-election, pledging to push for more reforms, better policies and to lead the nation forward.
In the first campaign event organized after he registered to contest the KMT’s party nomination on Thursday, Ma, who doubles as party chairman, shouted: “Keep on walking, Taiwan. Another victory for Taiwan,” with both hands held high amid cheers from a roomful of party members, voicing their support and calling for party unity.
“We are counting on party members to join forces and continue with party reform. Faced with tough presidential and legislative elections, we need to work harder to secure victories,” Ma said during a campaign event at the Armed Forces Officers’ Club in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
Ma, who campaigned on the slogan “Move forward, Taiwan. Victory for Taiwan” in 2008, is set to secure the party nomination uncontested as no challengers have come forward.
The KMT’s Central Standing Committee will formally approve the nomination of Ma as the party’s presidential candidate on May 4, in accordance with the party’s -nomination process.
The presence of Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) at the campaign rally raised speculation that he could be a possible running mate for Ma, with some party delegates declaring their support for such a ticket.
“With Premier Wu’s support base in the south, we believe the Ma-Wu ticket would attract greater support in southern Taiwan,” said a party delegate surnamed Huang, from Kaohsiung.
Wu declined to comment on whether he would be interested in running for the post of vice-president. Ma, on the other hand, thanked the premier for his efforts to implement government policies.
“I am thankful for Premier Wu’s hard work over the past years. It is not easy to implement government policies thoroughly,” he said.
Ma’s announcement that he intends to seek reelection comes amid recent challenges over the government’s nuclear power policy in the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan and an economic recovery that has been slower than expected.
Ma used the occasion to tout his policies, including a proposed luxury tax, which is intended to tackle skyrocketing house prices, and promised to continue implementing government policies that improve the economy and the lives of Taiwanese over the next four years.
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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