National Taiwan University physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday that he would make a final decision on whether to join the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) by March.
Ko, an independent who has a better support rating than the four DPP aspirants in the Taipei mayoral election, refuted a media report that he would join the DPP by the end of the year, saying that the decision would come likely sometime in March.
“I wanted to make the decision in June [next year], but had to advance it to March because the DPP chairmanship election is in May,” said Ko, adding that he would not rush his decision since the election is still a year away.
The self-proclaimed “amateur politician” seemed to be still struggling with the idea of joining the DPP, a move he said would make the election another showdown between the pan-blue and the pan-green camps. He said that the majority of his supporters and aides would like to see him run as an independent.
“I really don’t think that I should rush the decision, as the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] hasn’t nominated its candidate. With the election 12 months away, I believe we’ll be seeing a lot of changes and challenges. So why hurry?” he said.
While Ko enjoys a comfortable advantage over the other DPP aspirants, among them former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄), he was put in a difficult situation after the DPP pledged to nominate its own candidate in the Taipei election.
If Ko decides to remain an independent, the election would likely be a three-way race, which is likely to heavily favor the KMT and would almost guarantee a loss for the pan-green camp.
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
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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