The controversy over the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) legislative nomination in Greater Tainan showed signs of coming to an end yesterday, with a nod of acceptance by Mark Chen (陳唐山), a former presidential office secretary-general.
Chen announced, much to the relief of the DPP hierarchy and local supporters, that he would accept the party’s nomination for a disputed legislative seat in Greater Tainan’s fifth district, despite an initial reluctance that was caused by the party’s refusal to nominate his ally.
“It will be the last battle of my life,” said Chen, who has also previously served as foreign affairs minister and Tainan County commissioner.
He said that he had “decided from the start that I would not participate in the elections.”
“I never thought that it would change so fast,” he added.
The nomination came a week after Greater Tainan Councilor Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) tearfully announced that he would back out of the race, sparked by increasing signs that he would not receive the party’s nomination despite winning the primary.
Wang and the current holder of the seat, Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅), were involved in a bitter dispute during the primary that the DPP said harmed the party’s image.
Chen’s acceptance is understood to have come after personal pleas from DPP caucus chief Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) and other senior party figures concerned that votes in the heavily pan-green district would be lost following the very public dispute.
The day after Wang ended his bid on June 15, Chen suggested that he would not consider the request that he run made by a DPP nomination task force. He is seen as a natural successor to Lee, able to placate local factions that had either supported Wang or Lee.
DPP spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said the DPP “thanked Mark Chen for looking at the big picture and helping ensure a DPP victory in an important district.”
Mark Chen’s nomination is expected to be confirmed by a party committee on Wednesday.
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
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
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