President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) schedule for handing out hongbao (紅包), or lucky red envelopes for the Lunar New Year, yesterday renewed speculation about the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) plans for next year’s Taipei mayoral election.
Tsai and a delegation of officials visited the Guandu Temple (關渡宮) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) in the morning, the first of six stops where the president planned to distribute red envelopes carrying a NT$1 coin to local residents to wish them an auspicious and prosperous year ahead.
Tsai was accompanied to the temple by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤), who represents Taipei’s Beitou and Shilin (士林) electoral district, and a number of DPP Taipei City councilors.
DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智), who represents Taipei’s Shilin and Datong (大同) district and has announced his intent to run for Taipei mayor next year, also showed up for the Guandu Temple visit, the first time Yao and Ko have appeared at the same event since Ko said last month that he intended to seek re-election.
Ko, an independent, said at the time that four years were not enough to change the Taipei City Government’s “corporate culture.”
The DPP’s decision not to run its own candidate in 2014 is believed to have played a decisive role in Ko’s victory over his rival, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Committee member Sean Lien (連勝文). Ko won by about 244,000 votes.
However, the physician-turned-politician’s dwindling approval ratings have given rise to calls that he should not seek re-election and should instead yield to a DPP candidate.
A survey published by the Chinese-language China Times Weekly magazine on Thursday showed Ko leading his potential challengers from across party lines.
Asked if they would vote for Ko next year, 24.2 percent of respondents said yes, compared with 3 percent who said they would support Yao.
In response to reporters’ questions about who she would endorse for the race, Tsai, who also serves as DPP chairperson, just laughed.
Asked if he thought he would be a better candidate than Ko, Yao said they were both better than any candidates the KMT would nominate.
Tsai also visited several temples around the nation on Saturday to ask for blessings from the gods and distribute red envelopes to local residents.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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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