The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has disinvited Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) from its 19th national congress later this month, sources within the party said yesterday.
The congress will be held at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall on Sept. 29, during which KMT members will tackle issues of party policy, as well as attend the swearing in of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as KMT chairman.
The sources said the party leadership had decided that Wang, who would have attended the congress as chairman of the party’s Central Evaluation and Discipline Committee, would not be present due to the recent controversy over his alleged undue lobbying.
Wang stands accused by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigations Division (SID) of attempting to take legal pressure off Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) by lobbying High Prosecutors’ Office prosecutor Lin Shiow-tao (林秀濤) to not appeal Ker’s not-guilty verdict in a breach of trust case.
The SID says that Wang allegedly enlisted the help of former minister of justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) and High Prosecutors’ Office Head Prosecutor Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) to carry out the illegal lobbying.
The case led the KMT to revoke the legislative speaker’s membership, which in turn caused him to petition the Taiwan High Court to retain his privileges as a party member.
The court approved Wang’s appeal on Friday after stipulating that he pay NT$9.38 million (US$314,300) as a guarantee to the party, but it denied his request to obtain a restraining order to stop the Legislative Yuan from revoking his status as a legislator.
Wang dropped the latter petition on Saturday.
Although the court ruled that the legislative speaker would, for the moment, retain his party membership, the KMT’s Central Standing Committee’s still determined that Wang should not go to the congress, the sources said.
The Central Standing Committee’s view was that the court’s decision did not make Wang a party representative, nor did it mean that he would continue to be the chairman of the disciplinary committee, they added.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS