In preparation for the seven-in-one elections next year, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday established three task forces to deal with candidate nominations and public opinion polls, the party said.
Candidate exploratory committees for the Taipei City and New Taipei City (新北市) mayoral elections, as well as a public opinion poll committee, were established after the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting yesterday, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
The establishment of the exploratory committees marked the official beginning of the process of the DPP primaries, despite several aspirant candidates expressing an interest in entering the races in the two cities, who are seen as important constituencies in the six special municipality elections.
Lin added that both committees would consist of six members, with the Taipei City committee being headed by DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) and the New Taipei City committee led by DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬).
The committees are to begin inquiries about aspirant candidates and explore candidates’ election platforms before finalizing the candidate lists.
Intra-party competition in both cities appears to have been heating up, with former premier Yu Shyi-kun becoming the first candidate to announce his mayoral bid in New Taipei City last week and several intriguing figures expressing a strong interest in running in the capital. They include former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄), incumbent lawmaker Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) and National Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), a pro-DPP independent.
According to the DPP primary regulations, DPP headquarters will conduct negotiations in constituencies with two or more aspiring candidates if private negotiations between them fail.
If all negotiation attempts fail, public opinion polls will be held to determine the final candidate in affected constituencies.
The committee on public opinion polls in the primary, which consists of four academics and DPP secretary-general Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) serving as convener, was established as a precautionary measure in case of survey disputes between aspirants, the spokesperson said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift