Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said that he would not take part in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary, ending speculation on his run for the top office next year.
“No. Amitoufo,” Wu said to reporters on the sideline of a Buddhist event in Taichung, invoking a Buddhist mantra.
It was the first time that Wu gave an unequivocal answer to a question he has been asked repeatedly while the KMT has not announced a candidate.
Photo: CNA
Wu became the second expected presidential contender to abstain from the election.
New Taipei City Mayor and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) last month said that he would not run in the election in January next year.
Former health minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) and Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) have signed up for the KMT primary, while other KMT members with little political experience have picked up registration forms.
The registration period, which opened on April 20, is to close on May 16.
Results of the party primary are to be calculated from public opinion polls and a vote by party members. The party vote is to count for 30 percent of a candidate’s total score, while public opinion polls are to contribute 70 percent.
The opinion polls are to be conducted from June 5 to June 13, and party members are to vote on June 14.
Results are to be announced on the same day as the vote.
Party watchers and commentators also consider Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to be a likely contender, although he has remained tight-lipped about his intentions.
Separately yesterday, reporters asked former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) whether he considers Wang a good presidential candidate.
“It is up to everybody’s judgement; do not get me involved in the propaganda,” Lee said.
Despite his reluctance to weigh in on the matter, Lee said Wang has “qualities that a leader should carry.”
Wang, thanking Lee for his positive remarks, said he that had not met with Lee for more than a year before seeing him at a conference in Taipei yesterday.
Nothing about the presidential election was discussed, Wang added.
Additional reporting by Alison Hsiao
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: