Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday announced his bid for the KMT chairmanship, saying that he had planned to announce his bid tomorrow, but changed his mind after former vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) on Friday said he would have “some news” for the public after the weekend.
Hau said on Facebook that he decided to run for the chairmanship “after a period of deliberation.”
In a long post entitled “Looking forward to a selfless chairperson election,” Hau asked: “How many people still remember the selfless KMT where revolutionaries were willing to spill their blood for the cause and leaders gave up their power for the nation’s unification more than 100 years ago?”
Photo: CNA
“I’ve been asking the question myself for more than two years and expecting a leader to unite all the forces within the party, to prioritize the nation and the party over considerations of personal power,” Hau wrote.
He said that he admires KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) for having had the courage to take the reins of the party during its most difficult time, and that he respected Wu.
However, he has “been witnessing a party that is going downward; no matter how many mistakes the ruling Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] has made, the KMT, with the exception of its caucus, seems to have become an outsider [in the political realm],” Hau wrote.
Despite its criticism of the government, the public has no political force to rely on, he said, adding that he has “seen the people’s eager eyes for someone to express their bitterness.”
He wrote that the leader anticipated by the public “should not be someone who is obsessed with high-flown cross-strait rhetoric, the seniority of the Chinese officials they are able to meet and the reception they receive [in China],” rather, they should understand the hardships of the public and how to solve their problems.
Hau said the mission of the party is to “save the nation, not any person’s personal political life.”
“The crisis we are facing right now is that, with the KMT, or the main opposition party [not properly functioning] and not able to counterbalance the dominant DPP, we are losing even the Republic of China, which had been the common denominator of our society,” he said. “We are not only losing the party, but also our nation.”
It is due to the graveness of this burden that he decided to run for chairman even though Wu also revealed his intention to run, the vice chairman said.
Hau did not specify why he changed his scheduled date of announcement to yesterday, but said his “first thought upon hearing Wu’s intention was to postpone his own announcement.”
Local media outlets reported that Hau was dumbfounded by Wu’s “sudden change of mind” because on Wednesday last week he had informed Wu of his plan to run and also his intention to announce it this week, to which Wu made no explicit response.
Hung yesterday brushed off the question of whether there had been efforts on the part of KMT heavyweights to dissuade any of the three aspirants from running.
“Even if there were indeed attempts to dissuade candidates, I would be the last to be made to bow out,” she said.
Hau was said to have been asked to withdraw from the race, as his and Wu’s separate bids would greatly increase the chance of Hung being re-elected.
Hau’s office rebutted the rumor on Friday night, but added that “in a democratic nation there should be no more attempts to persuade anyone to withdraw.”
In the last few paragraphs of his Facebook post, Hau said he hoped that chairperson candidates could promise not to see the position as a springboard for their own political futures, but instead to help the party seek the best candidates for the 2018 local election and the 2020 presidential election, and also not to rule the party with the help of his or her own small faction but with a broad-minded mentality.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS