The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday drafted Minister Without Portfolio Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) as its candidate in the Greater Kaohsiung mayoral election, skipping the primary process in its bid for victory in the pan-green stronghold.
The 57-year-old Yang, a former member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), previously served as Kaohsiung county commissioner. He lost in the last election in 2010 to Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊).
Following his defeat, he campaigned for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election in 2012 and joined the KMT last year.
His selection was approved by the KMT’s Central Standing Committee yesterday.
“Yang has dedicated his efforts to the development of Greater Kaohsiung for years and was recognized as a ‘five-star’ local government head. We think he is an appropriate candidate,” KMT spokesperson Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) said.
The KMT skipped the primary process in Greater Kaohsiung as it is one of the cities that the party defined as a tough electoral district in the seven-in-one elections to be held later this year.
Yang Chiu-hsing will face a tough battle against Chen, but the KMT will spare no effort to seek victory in Greater Kaohsiung, Yang Wei-chung said.
The committee also approved the nomination of Keelung Council Speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰) as its candidate for the Keelung mayoral election and KMT Legislator Lin Ming-chen (林明溱) as its candidate in the Nantou County commissioner election.
Ma, in his capacity as KMT chairman, yesterday called for party unity ahead of the elections and promised to nominate the most talented candidates.
“The KMT and local branches will make every effort to complete the nomination process in accordance with the party’s plan and present talented candidates to represent the party in the elections,” Ma said yesterday when presiding over the committee meeting at KMT headquarters in Taipei.
The party has completed two rounds of nomination procedures and will finalize the final nominations in key campaigns, including Taipei, New Taipei City (新北市) and Greater Taichung, after the Lunar New Year holidays.
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