Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), an independent aspirant for the Taipei mayoral election, yesterday said that it would be “win or go home” for him in a primary between Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) contender Pasuya Yao (姚文智) and independents, saying that if he lost in the poll he would withdraw from the race.
Ko made the comment after Yao on Wednesday won the DPP poll, the first part of a two-stage mechanism that the DPP adopted to finalize a pan-green candidate among non-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) contenders, setting the stage for the second-phase primary.
According to the mechanism, a public opinion poll is to be held before the middle of next month — likely to be a head-to-head competition between Yao and Ko as the other independent hopeful, award-winning screenwriter Neil Peng (馮光遠), has hinted that he will not participate.
Speaking at a campaign event at Xining Market in Taipei yesterday, Ko acknowledged that his policy positions — including the elimination of Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) and his antinuclear stance — were similar to Yao’s.
The National Taiwan University Hospital physician, whose support rate has been leading all non-KMT aspirants, said he would garner more support from voters as an independent, but “it’s win or go home for me. I will not form a political party if I lose [the primary].”
Ko said on Wednesday in a meeting with reporters that he would not stay in the race even if he beat Yao by less than 3 percentage points in the deciding poll, which is to pit Yao and Ko against KMT candidate Sean Lien (連勝文), a former Taipei EasyCard Co chairman.
“I’m saying this because even if a candidate manages to consolidate support from the pan-green camp and the local factions of the KMT, he or she would have at best a 50-50 chance of defeating the KMT,” Ko said.
Ko said he would agree to participate in DPP-organized debates.
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