People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday said he would go the distance and stay in the presidential race until the end if he enters, which he said would once he has gathered enough signatures in his petition to take part in the presidential election.
When asked about the number of signatures he had collected so far, Soong only said that the number “is very close to the goal.”
Soong said extra steps were being taken to make sure that everything was being done right, adding that sending extra petitions to the Central Election Commission would be better than too few.
Soong has previously said he would collect 1 million signatures for his presidential petition — far more than the 257,695 required (1.5 percent of eligible voters in the previous legislative elections) and added that he would not join the presidential race if he failed to reach that goal.
In response to questions about whether he would make calls for “strategic voting” in January’s presidential election, Soong said in a TV interview yesterday that he would only tell voters to avoid voting for candidates who lacked the proper capabilities and those who did not live up to their promises.
When asked if the scenario of strategic voting meant only voting for Soong and not for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election, Soong answered in the affirmative.
When asked about the activities of his running mate, Lin Ruey-shiung (林瑞雄), Soong said Lin is currently in the south trying to build up support, adding that Lin had opted not to notify the media of his schedule.
“He jokingly told me that the other vice presidential candidates were causing a lot of trouble and he didn’t want to cause trouble for me,” Soong said.
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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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