Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has a comfortable lead over Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the race for the municipality’s mayorship, a public opinion poll released yesterday showed.
The survey was conducted by the Chinese-language Apple Daily and found that Lin had a support rate of 51.4 percent, while Hu, who is seeking re-election in November, had 33.9 percent and 14.7 percent of the respondents were undecided.
Lin’s leading margin of 17.5 percent was slightly down from the 19.9 percent margin he enjoyed in the newspaper’s previous survey in February, when he led the mayor by almost 20 percent — 53.6 percent to 33.7 percent.
Photo: Chang Ching-ya, Taipei Times
The latest poll was conducted between Friday and Saturday last week, and collected 1,087 valid samples.
Many political analysts and DPP and KMT politicians see the mayoral race in Greater Taichung as the defining battleground of the upcoming seven-in-one elections, since whoever wins that constituency will probably also take the bragging rights as the overall victor in the polls, since the DPP has always dominated the nation’s south, while the KMT claims the north as its stronghold.
In related news, DPP Department of Organization director Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) confirmed yesterday that National Taiwan University journalism professor Peng Wen-cheng (彭文正) had declined the party’s offer to run as its candidate in either the Hsinchu County commissioner or the Hsinchu mayoral races.
Peng had been hesitant to enter politics after seeing what had become of Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), saying that Jiang was former a highly renowned politics professor, but now the target of widespread dissastisfaction with his performance, Cheng quoted Peng as saying.
The DPP is trying hard to recruit Hakka candidates in the predominantly Hakka constituencies of Taoyuan County, Hsinchu County, Hsinchu City and Miaoli County, which have traditionally been the party’s weak spots.
As of now, the DPP has nominated Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) in Miaoli and former government information office minister Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) in Taoyuan. Overall, the party has completed its mayoral and commissioner nominations in 15 of the 22 constituencies.
If the remaining candidates are not selected before DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) term ends on May 20, those aspirants’ selections will be overseen by the next chairman, Cheng Yun-pen added.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods