President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) launched his campaign for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairmanship election yesterday by visiting Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, calling for party unity amid a series of challenges being made to his leadership.
Ma, the only candidate in next month’s election, touted the cooperation between the administrative and legislative branches of the government in passing major bills, and said the nation would continue to benefit from the smooth running of the “party-state mechanism.”
“Close cooperation between the party and the government is crucial for the implementation of policies, and providing support to and assisting with government policies are the permanent duties of KMT members,” he said at a meeting of party delegates and local councilors in Hsinchu County.
Photo: CNA
Former Hsinchu mayor Lin Junq-tzer (林政則) accompanied Ma to the meetings, urging local party members to support Ma’s re-election campaign in a bid to inspire enthusiasm and quell lukewarm attitudes toward the election.
“It’d be embarrassing if the poll turnout is too low,” he said.
Ma became the sole candidate in the election after the other hopeful, KMT Central Standing Committee member Hsieh Kun-hung (謝坤宏), was disqualified on Wednesday after the KMT’s election review commission ruled that only 6,610 of the 20,952 signatures Hsieh collected were valid.
Ma’s bid was approved after he delivered 82,786 signatures to the commission, 59,925 of which were declared valid.
According to the KMT, about 380,000 party members are eligible to vote in the election, while those interested in entering the race must obtain the endorsement of 3 percent, or about 12,000, of the voters.
Hsieh’s appeal to the party for a second review was unsuccessful, leaving Ma with no rivals in the July 20 election.
Ma yesterday also took the opportunity to defend the cross-strait service trade agreement, saying that the pact will create more job opportunities for Taiwanese.
“The nation will face more challenges ahead and only by continuing our efforts can we earn the trust of the public,” he said.
Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中), Ma’s re-election campaign office spokesman, said the president will visit at least three cities or counties a day on weekends to enhance his relationship with party members.
Ma, who was first elected as chairman in 2005, is taking a leave of absence from his post to conduct his campaign.
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