Heavy metal band Chthonic’s lead vocalist, Freddy Lim (林昶佐), also a founding member of the New Power Party (NPP), yesterday said that he planned to run in next year’s legislative election.
“I will compete for the legislative seat in Taipei’s Daan District (大安),” Lim told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview. “I decided to run in Daan simply because I was born and raised there, and my attachment to the neighborhood prompted me to do something for its residents.”
Lim has rejected the traditional bipolarization of the electorate into pan-blue and pan-green camps, saying that such polarization should no longer be considered effective, as Daan, like any other electoral district, is plural in nature.
“Daan is home to a heterogenous population, which includes people like me — a founding member of a minor party — and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] Taipei mayoral candidate in last year’s elections Sean Lien (連勝文),” he said.
The rocker and long-time human rights activist would be pitted against incumbent Chiang Nai-hsin (蔣乃辛) of the KMT in the electoral district, which is traditionally considered a pan-blue stronghold.
Chiang was re-elected as the legislator for Daan in 2012 with 108,488 votes — 60.02 percent of the total votes cast in the district — overpowering his Democratic Progressive Party opponent Chao Shih-chiang (趙士強), who gained only 54,113 ballots, or 29.94 percent of the votes.
Lim’s announcement came shortly after two human rights lawyers from the NPP — Hu Po-yen (胡博硯) and Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) — announced their bids to enter the legislative elections for New Taipei City’s Zhonghe District (中和) and Hsinchu City last week.
The one-month-old NPP advocates a “normalized” national status for Taiwan, promotion of tax reform and improved social security measures, as well as reform to the much maligned Referendum Act (公民投票法).
Lim said that a more thorough statement on his candidacy would be made public tomorrow, likely accompanied by the announcement of the second wave of NPP candidates.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by