The campaign office of beaten Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) began packing up yesterday, but neither Lien nor his campaign manager, KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), have been seen since Lien’s concession speech on Saturday.
Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) won the race with 57.16 percent of the votes, topping Lien, who garnered 40.82 percent of ballots.
While most pundits thought Tsai originated several negative campaign tactics that are thought to have been a top factor in Lien’s loss, a Lien campaign official yesterday said that the strategy originated with Lien’s father, former vice president and former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰).
The official, who wished to remain anonymous, said that surveys conducted for internal use only suggested that Sean Lien would lose to Ko by just 10 percent.
“We expected we would lose the election; we just did not expect to lose by this wide a margin,” the official said.
As for the negative strategy, the official said that Tsai was asked to manage the campaign because of his hawkish reputation. However, Tsai did not have the weight to affect overall campaign strategy, the official added.
For example, KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) — after finding a particular smear had little effect — tried to stifle allegations that Ko laundered money through a National Taiwan University Hospital account, the official said, adding that Lien Chan had pulled her aside for a talk, after which the allegations continued.
The official said the campaign office later realized the harm that the negative campaigning caused and asked the former head of its promotional division, You Tzu-hsiang (游梓翔) — who was against the tactics — to return in hopes of limiting the fallout.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
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