A hold should be place on next month’s presidential election until a ruling is issued on the constitutionally of registration requirements for independent presidential candidates, former independent candidate Shih Ming-te (施明德) said yesterday.
“Some people might think our actions are ‘silly’ — clearly time is short and voters will not pay attention — but progress and justice are often the result of people taking similar ‘silly’ steps,” Shih said.
Shih’s application to appear on next month’s presidential ballot was rejected by the Central Election Commission for failing to meet requirements that independent candidates have at least 270,000 signed petitions.
Regulations also stipulate that independent candidates must provide a NT$15 million (US$454,339) deposit, which is forfeited if candidates fail to gain more than 5 percent of the national vote.
Shih blasted a 1998 Council of Grand Justices ruling upholding the deposit requirement for stating that it was necessary to prevent people for running for president “at will.”
“That Council of Grand Justices decision was a product of the authoritarian era,” he said.
“They were full of authoritarian ideas, as if to stand for president you have to be a ‘son of a dragon’ or ‘daughter of a phoenix’ (龍子鳳女) — someone with stature, wealth and even the support of political factions,” he said.
Shih’s lawyer, Nigel Lee (李念祖), said the registration requirement violated constitutional provisions stating that conditions for standing for election should be “common” and “equal,” ruling out wealth requirements and differential treatment based on party affiliation.
Lee said that because the election would be finalized before Shih’s lawsuit is heard by the Council of Grand Justices, they would ask the Taipei High Administrative Court to issue a provisional injunction, requiring either the election be postponed or Shih’s name to be placed on the ballot.
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:
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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