Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) yesterday called for unified support for his colleague Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), who is expected to receive the KMT’s official nomination as its Taichung mayoral candidate today.
Lu earlier this month edged out Chiang by a narrow margin of about 0.6 percent in opinion polls for the party’s primary for the mayoral post, securing a support rating of 50.308 percent against Chiang’s 49.692 percent.
“The 0.6 margin does not and will not change my love for Taichung. I will not be absent from a campaign that would shape the city’s future development,” Chiang said on Facebook after former Taichung mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) paid him a visit at his residence in Taichung earlier yesterday.
Photo: Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times, from Johnny Chiang’s Facebook profile
The KMT’s Taichung mayoral candidate would no doubt do their utmost to form a strong campaign team in the hope of winning back the municipality, one that he said would not only include himself, but many other talented people, Chiang said.
“Though Lu and I have yet to go into the details about the lineup of her campaign team and the position [I would hold], I will keep an open mind and prioritize the bigger picture over formality,” Chiang said.
The key for the KMT taking back Taichung is to provide voters in the city with a clearer and more effective blueprint for the future, so as to set the party apart from Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung’s (林佳龍) slogan-centered style of leadership, Chiang said.
Chiang said he is confident that Lu would do a better job than him and asked members of the KMT Central Standing Committee to throw their unified support behind Lu and nominate her as the party’s Taichung mayoral candidate at a today’s committee meeting.
Hu was Taichung mayor from 2001 to 2014, before losing to the Democratic Progressive Party’s Lin by about 200,000 votes in the 2014 nine-in-one local elections.
The merger of Taichung City and Taichung County in 2010 allowed Hu to bypass the two-term limit and run for mayor of the special municipality that year.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS