President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was willing to negotiate with the People First Party (PFP) on legislative nominations, repeating the call for cooperation between the two parties.
Ma said the party was willing to discuss legislative nominations with the PFP if the PFP had problems with the KMT’s nominations.
“The best way [to mend the rift in the pan-blue camp] is to talk about the issue in the open,” he said.
Stressing the KMT and the PFP shared the same ideals and beliefs, Ma said the KMT respected the independence of the PFP and it promised to consider PFP hopefuls in electoral districts where the KMT has not yet completed its nomination process.
The KMT has completed its legislative nomination process in 69 electoral districts and it is scheduled to complete the process in the remaining six districts by the end of this month. Talks about KMT-PFP cooperation and a possible meeting between Ma and PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) emerged in May when the KMT called on the PFP to hold talks on joint nominations.
However, Soong and the PFP have lashed out at the KMT for its failure to raise the joint nomination issue earlier and suggested the PFP would present its own nominations.
The PFP’s reluctance to cooperate with the KMT on legislative nominations prompted former KMT secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) to announce that he is willing to drop a lawsuit against Soong for accusing him of staging fraudulent public opinion polls during Soong’s 2000 presidential campaign.
In a press release on Thursday night, King said he was “willing to drop the lawsuit” if Soong and the other defendants made no more accusations against him.
KMT spokesperson Lai Su-ju (賴素如) said yesterday that King would drop the lawsuit in the next few days in hope of future KMT-PFP cooperation.
“Communications and negotiations between the KMT and the PFP never stopped, and the KMT will not give up the chance to cooperate with the PFP. We believe that dropping the lawsuit would be helpful for our cooperation,” she said.
PFP spokesperson Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said yesterday that King’s decision to drop the lawsuit was a friendly gesture, but the PFP’s goal of forming a legislative caucus remained unchanged.
“The KMT has completed most of its legislative nominations. Which candidates would be willing to withdraw from the race?” she asked. “Besides, the KMT’s proposed negotiations are meaningless because the PFP still wants to put up its own candidates.”
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,