Several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei city councilors yesterday urged the party to nominate its own mayoral candidate, at a meeting with the party’s Central Election Commission to collect opinions on the Taipei mayoral election in November.
Speculation has mounted on whether the DPP would field its own candidate or opt to collaborate with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) again.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Ho Chih-wei (何志偉) compared Ko to a recent food fad, “dirty bread” — bread covered with chocolate dust and filled with cream or custard — saying that eating the bread has made the DPP dirty, but now the fad is over, the party has to rely on itself.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
DPP Taipei City Councilor Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) said that the time to cooperate with Ko, an independent, is over and many DPP supporters are urging the party to field its own candidate, and the party should respect their feelings.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Wang Wei-chung (王威中) said that many of the participants at the meeting supported the idea of having the party field its own candidate, although some said that they have also heard DPP supporters saying they would vote for the party’s councilor candidates, but support Ko even if the party fields its own mayoral candidate.
Wang said that some attendees suggested that the party nominate either Premier William Lai (賴清德) or Presidential Office Secretary-General and former Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) as its mayoral candidate.
In related news, following Ko’s apology in a radio interview on Wednesday to people who were upset over his remark last year that the “two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family,” several political figures and critics accused him of trying to score political points.
Ko yesterday said he cannot do anything about the fact that there will always be people upset with what he did, adding that he apologized because he was trying to console people who were upset over his “one family” remark.
Noting that there are more than 370,000 Chinese spouses in Taiwan and that China accounts for a good portion of the nation’s export market, Ko said that efforts to reduce tension or conflict in cross-strait relations are still needed.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS