Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who was re-elected legislative speaker on Wednesday, will have headed the legislature for 17 years when he finishes his fifth term in 2016, making him the longest-serving speaker in the nation’s history.
A 71-year-old native of Kaohsiung, Wang spent years in the business world before being elected a legislator in 1976, which marked the beginning of his public service.
During his decades in the legislature, Wang, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has enjoyed popularity among legislators across party lines for his signature “easygoing” character.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
In the 2002 legislative speaker election, Wang won 218 out of a possible 225 votes. At the time, the KMT held 68 seats, while the then-ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had 87. The People First Party (PFP), another pan-blue party, held 46. The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), a DPP ally, held 13. The New Party, a splinter party from the KMT, held one seat, while 10 others were independents.
In 2006, Wang and then-Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had a contretemps when they were running against each other for the KMT chairmanship. At the time, Ma suggested that Wang was involved in corruption.
In Wednesday’s election, Wang defeated the DPP’s Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) by a vote of 68-43 in the 113-seat legislature. The KMT holds 64 seats, the DPP has 40 and the TSU has three. The PFP has three seats, while the other three seats are held by independents.
Shortly after the election result came out, Wang thanked the legislators who supported his re-election bid.
“I have now shouldered more responsibility,” he said, adding that he will stick with the principle of respecting different opinions.
The KMT no longer has the overwhelming majority it had in the previous one legislature. With each party having its own caucus, Wang’s ability to coordinate between different parties and resolve their differences on issues will be tested, political commentators said.
One upcoming task facing the legislature is how it can cooperate with the government in dealing with the European debt crisis that looms over the global economy.
A proposal to construct a new building for the legislature and the TSU’s proposal to reform the “single-member constituency” electoral system are other tough tasks facing Wang in the days ahead, pundits said.
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
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
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