Several civic groups affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday announced that they are to jointly hold a forum in Taipei, inviting KMT chairperson hopefuls to answer questions regarding the party’s future.
The forum, scheduled to take place on Saturday at 9am, is to be jointly hosted by the pro-reform Grassroots Alliance, Open KMT, Workers of the Closed Party and the Chong Shing Elites of the Kuomintang.
“Following the KMT’s unprecedented defeat in last month’s presidential and legislative elections, several groups founded by young KMT members, including the Grassroots Alliance, Open KMT, and Workers of the Closed Party, have joined forces and endeavored to inject new momentum into the party’s reform efforts,” Grassroots Alliance founder Lee Zheng-hao (李正皓) said yesterday.
Lee said that with the KMT’s chairperson by-election to take place on March 26, they decided to hold the forum titled “Chairperson, may I ask a question?” in an effort to subject candidates’ ideas and values to public scrutiny.
The forum consists of four phases: opening remarks by candidates, questions from event organizers, questions from the audience and concluding remarks by the candidates, Lee said.
“The event organizers’ questions will cover five topics: the establishment of an intraparty system for cultivating young talent, structural adjustments to the KMT’s deep-blue Huang Fu-hsing military veterans branch, possible solutions to the party’s contentious assets, the direction of cross-strait relations and the reconstruction of the KMT’s core values,” Lee said.
Lee added that 100 people are to be admitted to the forum as members of the audience, adding that those who want to attend need to register online at http://goo.gl/forms/Ndz9ywIa0K.
As of yesterday, three of the KMT’s five chairperson candidates had agreed to attend the forum, including KMT Acting Chairperson Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠), Taipei City Councilor Lee Hsin (李新) and KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖), Lee said.
However, former deputy legislative speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and KMT Central Standing Committee member Lin Rong-te (林榮德) have yet to respond to the groups’ invitation, Lee said.
“We will continue to extend invitations to hopefuls that have not responded,” he said.
According to the KMT’s by-election regulations, only hopefuls who collect signatures from at least 3 percent of all party members before Sunday can officially register as candidates.
Meanwhile, a source from Hung’s camp, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hung would not attend the forum due to a schedule conflict.
“Regardless of which election she is in, Hung has never signed petitions or attended events hosted by unofficial organizations. She is inclined not to participate in Saturday’s forum and does not plan to attend other similar events in the future,” the source said.
Hung only hopes that KMT headquarters holds a formal debate among chairperson hopefuls at the earliest date possible in a just and open manner, the source added.
Hung yesterday said that she has garnered more than 16,000 signatures from party members and has therefore crossed the threshold to register her candidacy.
On Facebook, she called for volunteers to help monitor the voting process during the by-election.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiao-kuang
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS