Despite persistently denying he is interested in running for president next year, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) is still regarded by many party members and supporters as the most desirable candidate.
The calls for the New Taipei City mayor to take part in the KMT’s primary have not faded, despite his public refusals, and have intensified since he returned from a trip to China earlier this week.
With only nine days left for hopefuls to sign up for the KMT primary, several KMT legislators were reportedly planning to urge caucus staff and lawmakers to meet with Chu to urge him to run.
Caucus whip Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) denied the report, but said it is true that various KMT lawmakers have been trying to arrange a meeting with Chu.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said that during the trip to China for the KMT-Chinese Communist Party forum, he had asked KMT Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) about arranging for a meeting to talk to Chu about running for president.
“Chu will probably not be available until next week, when I will report to the chairman and arrange a meeting for the lawmakers to talk about not only the election, but also party affairs,” Lee said.
However, not all KMT lawmakers are enthusiastic about a Chu candidacy in the primary.
“The call would not be a resolution of the KMT caucus as a whole,” Legislator Chiang Hui-chen (江惠貞) said.
Given that some lawmakers back Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) as a candidate, the caucus should not make any resolution on the support for a potential candidate at this stage in case it leads to divisions within the party, Chiang said.
Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who has registered for the KMT primary, said Chu has told her that he “is occupied by too many things to enter the presidential race.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,