Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) yesterday pledged his unconditionally support to Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in the Taipei mayoral election in November, after he lost to his independent rival on Friday in a public opinion poll to determine the pan-green camp’s final candidate for the contest.
Thanking his backers for their support, the lawmaker yesterday said he respects the results of the poll and would endeavor to help Ko win the election.
The party’s integration panel said the poll’s results are to be referred to the its Central Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday for a final decision.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Ko is widely expected to represent the pan-green camp in the Taipei mayoral race in November and run against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) if the DPP decides not to nominate a candidate from its ranks.
Political observers say Ko must figure out how to maintain the straight-talking style that has seen him dominate opinion polls, while offering voters substance in terms of his policy ideas and political plans and all the while keeping his foot out of his mouth.
Ko’s spokesperson Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) has said the mayoral hopeful will aim to “speak more cautiously in the future,” while bidding not to disappoint his assistants, who hope the novice politician will stay true to his character of “telling it like it is.”
However, Ko has shown no sign of toning down the penchant for sharp rhetoric that in May last year saw him declare: “This country has gone mad,” after receiving a summons from the Investigation Bureau’s Taipei office over allegations of corruption in one of his research projects.
Yet Ko will have to present more than biting criticism of the government to convince Taipei voters he is the right person to govern the city.
In an ironically comedic twist, Ko is partly responsible for his rival, Lien, being eligible to run against him because he helped debunk rumors that the KMT candidate staged a shooting and faked injuries to garner sympathy votes for KMT candidates on the eve of the 2010 municipal elections.
Lien was shot in the face while stumping for a New Taipei City councilor candidate at a public rally and it was Ko, as a specialist in emergency medicine at National Taiwan University Hospital, who led a team of physicians to operate on Lien after the shooting.
A TVBS poll conducted on the nights of June 5 and 6 gave Ko a 45 to 39 percent advantage in the race, the first time a public poll has not put Lien in front.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS