Two Taipei mayoral hopefuls have united to assemble a voluntary legal team in preparation for potential legal battles against former Taipei EasyCard Co chairman Sean Lien (連勝文).
Lien, who is a son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Taipei mayoral hopeful, boasted a strong legal team as part of his campaign office.
Independent candidate Neil Peng (馮光遠), an award-winning screenplay writer, and lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄), who is vying for the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) nomination, announced the establishment of what they called the “submarine legal team” of almost 30 lawyers yesterday.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
The team’s name, submarine, was in response to Lien calling his legal team his campaign’s “aircraft carrier.”
Lien was quoted as saying that the team would file defamation lawsuits against anyone, including the media, who makes false allegations about his wealth, background and character.
“Our team will defend people who are sued by Lien during the election campaign, so that freedom of speech can be protected,” Peng told a press conference at Jiancheng Circle (建成圓環) market of Datong District (大同), also the location for Lien’s bid announcement on Monday.
Peng and Koo, who will serve as the leader of the team, noted that Lien’s threat of a legal war could violate human rights principles.
Lien is obligated to be scrutinized by the public now that he has officially thrown his hat in the ring, Koo said.
He added that the massive wealth that the Lien family had accumulated despite his father and grandfather’s occupations as public servants was “a public affairs issue rather than a personal issue.”
Sean Lien’s spokesperson, Chin Hui-yuan (秦蕙媛), said he would accept criticism and would only take legal action if an allegation was groundless and seen as “character assassination.”
Meanwhile, Taipei mayoral aspirant Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that a Chinese university had canceled an invitation for him to speak there.
Ko, a National Taiwan University Hospital surgeon who has expressed his desire to run for the capital’s top post, said that he was invited by Xiamen University’s Taiwan Research Institute to give a speech at the university today and to attend a forum.
However, Ko said he received an e-mail from the institute on Feb. 8 in which his invitation was rescinded. Ko said he was unaware of the reason.
The DPP has listed five potential nominees — former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Koo, lawmakers Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) and Pasuya Yao (姚文智), and Taipei Council Deputy Speaker Chou Po-ya (周柏雅) for the mayoral election.
Opinion polls since late last year have shown that Ko, who has yet to decide whether to join the DPP, is the front-runner among possible non-KMT candidates.
Additional reporting by CNA
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