Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday released a survey showing that she has the backing of almost 68 percent of KMT supporters if she is the only potential Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate for the presidential election in January.
Hung released the survey yesterday afternoon, after complaining in the morning that it would be against KMT policy if a poll required as part of the party primary pits her against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), as party rules state that it should be a standalone survey to test a candidate’s popularity.
She added that she would like her NT$7 million (US$227,265) back — the fee she paid to join the primary — “if party headquarters has no plans for me to hold policy presentations, so I can do it myself.”
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
When asked about some party members’ suggestion to have Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) listed alongside Hung as possible candidates in a poll, Hung asked: “Why did they not join the primary in the first place then?”
“It would be unfair. It is like after having taken so many examinations and you are in the final stage, suddenly a group of people appears and say they want to take the final exam as well,” she said.
According to the poll Hung released yesterday, 51.9 percent considered “drafting whoever is favored by the party” — instead of selecting one through a primary — would taint the KMT’s image.
It is understandable that some members have their own preferences before the party makes a final decision, but the poll shows that drafting a candidate might hurt the party and undermine the party’s election campaign, Hung said.
The poll was commissioned by Hung and conducted by Trend Survey and Research Co. Of the 1,068 respondents, 33.5 percent supported Hung, 40.9 percent did not and 25.5 had no opinion. Among respondents who support the pan-blue camp, 55.2 percent said they support Hung.
When asked if the KMT fields Hung, with Wang, Wu and Chu opting to stay out of the race, 42.1 percent of respondents said Hung would be their choice.
Among pan-blue supporters, 67.8 percent said they would back her, the poll showed.
Hung said the poll has demonstrated that she has crossed the 30 percent support threshold required by the party’s primary rules.
Addressing rumors that she would quit midway through the primary, Hung said: “This is an insult to my dignity,” as that would imply she was aiming for something in exchange.
The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent, with a confidence level of 95 percent.
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
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
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