Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信), a law professor at National Cheng Kung University, confirmed yesterday that he had accepted a nomination by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) to be one of its top two candidates on its legislator-at-large list.
Attorney Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said he had declined a similar offer by the TSU.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that Koo and Hsu had been picked by the TSU as the top two candidates on its list.
As a small party aligned with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the TSU hopes to attain a threshold of 5 percent of total votes in January’s legislative elections, in which a second-ballot voting system will allow voters to pick the party of their choice.
The TSU hopes to secure at least two of the 34 legislator-at-large seats.
The party said this was its only goal in the two-in-one elections and has pledged to support DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the DPP’s presidential candidate, by not nominating any candidate in the 73 single-member district elections.
Commenting on his decision to accept the nomination, Hsu said the TSU had first contacted him two weeks ago and had approached him on three occasions.
“I accepted the offer to be a candidate as long as Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen agrees, because she was my advisor for my doctoral dissertation,” he said.
If voted into the legislature, the economics law professor said he would focus on economic -issues, including the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed by Taiwan and China in June last year.
The agreement, which provides tariff breaks and other favors that risk unduly tying Taiwan’s economy to that of China, will make it more difficult for Taiwan’s industry to upgrade through branding and greater emphasis on research and development, he said.
“We don’t have to depend solely on China economically. There is so much the government can do to help local small and medium-sized enterprises [SME],” Hsu said, giving the example of southwestern Germany, where authorities provided assistance to SMEs with low-interest loans and the integration of research-and-development capabilities.
Koo, who is representing former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in a corruption case against Lee, said he had declined the offer, but TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) had asked him to give it more thought.
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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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