Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chi Kuo-tung (紀國棟), who has often panned the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on political talk shows and is seeking another term in the legislature, has been accused of owing the party millions of New Taiwan dollars in fines, which could have repercussions on his potential nomination.
The Chinese-language China Times yesterday reported that Chi and fellow lawmaker Tseng Chu-wei (曾巨威), a retired finance professor who has strongly advocated tax reform, have been in arrears to the party.
Legislators can be fined NT$10,000, with a cap of NT$50,000 a day, if they fail to abide by certain rules, such as showing up when required for legislative votes or voting in line with the party, but many KMT lawmakers had been disinclined to pay, the report said.
The report also cited a party official as denouncing Chi, currently an at-large legislator, for berating the KMT government, yet refusing to pay his debts, which according to KMT regulations would exclude him as a possible legislator candidate on a KMT ticket.
Chi said the accusation was made by party members who are “green” and not experienced enough, “and they are not helping the party by doing this.”
“Some party members are just narrow-minded, using the issue to stir up infighting,” he added.
Chi is reportedly planning to challenge KMT Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung.
Yen is the son of former Non-Partisan Solidarity Union legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標).
Yen Kuan-heng replaced his father in a by-election after Yen Ching-piao was incarcerated for convictions of illegal gun possession and other charges.
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
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
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