Former deputy legislative speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who won the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) chairperson by-election on Saturday, is to officially take the helm of the party in a ceremony tomorrow.
Hung hopes that the ceremony will be simple and without fanfare, as it is a crucial time for rebuilding the KMT after it lost both the presidency and its legislative majority in national elections on Jan. 16, her aide said.
Hung did not make public her schedule on Sunday, but according to her aide she was busy making telephone calls to thank voters and contemplating personnel changes within the party.
She previously proposed bolstering the KMT’s ranks by recruiting talented people from the political arena and academics who are willing to fight for the party.
The KMT’s next secretary-general will reportedly be required to have plenty of experience in party politics, good communication and coordination skills and be familiar with administrative operations.
The party headquarters plans to invite President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), former KMT chairmen Lien Chan (連戰) and Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to attend the ceremony, but the list of attendees has yet to be finalized, Hung’s aide said.
Hung is to serve as KMT chairperson until July 2017, when a new leader would be elected.
The party controls only one of Taiwan’s six major municipalities, down from four prior to the nine-in-one elections in 2014.
“We found that the hearts of party members have stayed together. With one heart, we can unite and the party will have a tomorrow and hope,” Hung said on Sunday.
Hung, who is seen as representing the wing of the KMT that favors moving toward unification with China, said she had no plans to visit China, but added that the communications platform between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party would be maintained.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), in his capacity as the Chinese Communist Party’s general secretary, congratulated Hung on Sunday.
Xi expressed hope that both sides of the Taiwan Strait could uphold the so-called “1992 consensus” and oppose Taiwanese independence.
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
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,
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