Taipei Deputy Mayor Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) yesterday confirmed he plans to run for New Taipei City mayor in next year’s elections, and predicted the race is likely to end up a contest between himself and New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou Yu-yi (侯友宜).
Chen made the remarks during a radio show hosted by political commentator Huang Kuang-chin (黃光芹).
Chen confirmed that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had approached him about entering the race, saying that he began to take the idea seriously after attending a New Taipei City Yunlin Fellowship Association event on Sept. 29, where many people encouraged him to run.
Photo: CNA
Whether he would run on the DPP ticket would be up to public opinion, as DPP legislators Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) and Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) have also said they are interested in entering the party primary for the New Taipei City race, while the mayor of New Taipei City — and Taipei County before that — has often come from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
New Taipei City is the only one of the nation’s six special municipalities that is not governed by the DPP or someone that it supports, so the election would be tough to win.
Asked if Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) had given him permission to run in the election, he said he had once told Ko that he had received positive responses attending fellowship association events, and that Ko agreed he could campaign in his free time.
Ko also told him that he would have to put a lot of effort into an election campaign if that is what he decided to do, adding “no pain no gain,” Chen said.
Huang asked Chen how he would handle a potential conflict of interest down the road, as Hou is supported by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who might try to run for president again in 2020, and Chen might be supported by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is expected to seek re-election, and Ko, who might also seek the president in 2020.
He said he is a DPP member, so he would certainly support whoever the party nominates as its next presidential candidate, but that he thinks Ko is unlikely to run for president in 2020.
However, Chen said he thinks the New Taipei City race would be “an exciting battle between two deputy mayors” if he is nominated, and that it would be a battle between policies.
Meanwhile, asked later in the day whether he would help Chen win support, Ko said: “I will encourage him and help him if I can … but actually, I think the critical element of winning at the end in elections is the efforts made by the candidates themselves, as support from other people has a limited impact.”
Asked by a reporter about his remark that candidates’ personal charms are very important and whether he considers Chen to have the necessary personal charm, Ko said it was difficult to predict at this point.
It all depended upon how Chen performed in the next six months, as public opinion changes rapidly, Ko said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift