The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday filed another lawsuit against Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) and played down an opinion poll showing its presidential candidate, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), behind by 8 percentage points.
Tsai received 32.2 percent of support from respondents, 8 percentage points behind President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 40.2 percent, an opinion poll published yesterday by the Chinese--language Apple Daily showed.
The survey, conducted from Monday to Wednesday with 1,101 samples, also showed 5.5 percent of respondents said they would vote for People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) and 22.1 percent remained undecided.
In response to press queries, Tsai offered the same answer every time she was asked about poll results, saying her campaign would “take the survey as a reference.”
In Taipei, the DPP filed another lawsuit against Liu and KMT spokesperson Lai Su-ju (賴素如) over violations of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), accusing them of spreading rumors or false statements for the purpose of getting a candidate elected or impeding a candidate’s election chances.
Liu yesterday posted two questions on the CEPD Web site about Tsai’s alleged improper involvement in the formation of Yu Chang Biologics Co (宇昌生技股份有限公司), now know as TaiMed Biologics Inc (中裕新藥股份有限公司), when she served as vice premier between 2006 and 2007.
The public-owned National Development Fund (NDF) was authorized by the Executive Yuan to invest in Yu Chang, which appointed three board members and one supervisor, DPP spokesperson Kang Yu-cheng (康裕成) said. As the NDF had only one board member and one supervisor, Liu was wrong to characterize it as the majority investor she said.
DPP spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said Liu could easily find the answer to her second question regarding the different names of various companies during the formation of Yu Chang by checking information with the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Liu had repeatedly cited incorrect information or altered documents to smear Tsai and benefit President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign, he said.
In related news, Chen criticized Ma in a press release yesterday for citing an incorrect report.
Citing a Financial Times report in September, Ma said during a televised platform presentation on Friday night that the US government had expressed concerns about stability across the Taiwan Strait if Tsai was elected president.
Chen said the US Department of State had reaffirmed that comments by the unnamed official quoted in the newspaper did not represent the official position of the US government and the US would remain neutral in Taiwan Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections
“It was a vicious campaign tactic,” Chen said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
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