Independent Taipei mayoral hopeful Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is scheduled to visit the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters in Taipei today for a discussion of campaign details after defeating rival contender DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) in a DPP primary on Friday, Ko’s campaign office said.
Meanwhile, New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) said various reports published recently about his possible presidential bid and political moves were “all made up.”
Ko topped Yao in a public opinion poll that will help determine the pan-green camp’s candidate to challenge Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate and former Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) in the Taipei mayoral election in November.
While the DPP’s final decision on nominating its own candidate is not expected before the party’s Central Executive Committee meetings on Wednesday, the possibility of ignoring the poll results to nominate Yao is low, local media reports said.
That is why Ko is reportedly set to begin a negotiation process with the DPP about how the campaign is to proceed over the next five months, as it would be difficult for the party to publicly endorse and campaign for Ko.
The 54-year-old physician, who took a leave of absence from the National Taiwan University Hospital’s traumatology department to campaign, is scheduled to meet with DPP officials today in a closed-door meeting, Ko’s office said yesterday.
Responding to a media inquiry about funding, Ko said at a campaign stop in Changhua County yesterday that he planned to raise his funding from small donors rather than corporate ones.
“I have never run an election campaign before and have no idea what the cost would be, but I am going to use what I have,” said Ko, who has said that high campaign costs and the presence of large corporate donations from big business fuel “decadence” in Taiwanese politics.
Ko spokesperson Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) said the candidate’s office has raised more than NT$10 million (US$337,000) and that Ko would ask the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the People First Party for potential cooperation as well.
Lien yesterday played down his reported polling deficit against Ko, which according to several media outlets was as high as 15 percentage points, saying that the gap — if there was one — would serve as a warning and a reminder to his campaign to work harder.
Lien said during his visit to Chih-nan Temple in Taipei that “you don’t get elected as mayor simply from what you say.”
Media outlets reported that Chu would be giving up a re-election bid and entering the 2016 presidential election and that the trio of Chu, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) are going to establish an “alliance” for the “post-Ma era” after Ma leaves office in 2016.
“I’m not aware of any of those things, nor do I think they really happened,” Chu said, adding that his focus remains on doing his job well as the mayor of New Taipei City.
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
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
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