Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday said that there is no doubt that KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) is her election campaign manager and KMT Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) the campaign director, after weeks of media speculation that nobody in the KMT camp was willing to take the jobs.
Following Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) announcement that Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is to be her campaign manager, Hung on Wednesday said that it is the candidate who runs that matters.
“If the candidate is empty [in substance], it would not change a thing, no matter who has been chosen as the campaign manager,” she said.
Photo: Chou Min-hung, Taipei Times
When asked about her own campaign team, Hung yesterday said that the KMT has a united front that binds the party’s legislative and presidential campaigns, “so Chairman Chu and Lee are undoubtedly the campaign manager and director, and other personnel appointments will be announced later.”
Speculation was rife that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) was Hung’s first choice for campaign manager, until Wang refused the appointment publicly last month, saying that “putting me in a difficult position is tantamount to putting the legislature in a difficult position.”
Media reports have also mentioned former KMT secretary-general Liao Liou-yi (廖了以), former Examination Yuan president John Kuan (關中), Presidential Office Secretary-General Tseng Tung-chuan (曾永權) and National Policy Foundation executive general Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) as possible campaign managers, but none were confirmed.
Hung reiterated that it is “impossible” that the KMT would change its candidate now, as rumors spread yet again that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is not against replacing Hung with Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) as the KMT presidential candidate if Hung’s poll numbers remain low this month.
Hung also stressed that it is not possible for the KMT and the People First Party — the two parties that are widely seen as “pan-blue” — to cooperate, saying the latter has “already collaborated with somebody else,” indicating that the PFP is aligned with the DPP.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS