Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Kao Su-po (高思博) yesterday defeated his opponent in the KMT’s Tainan mayoral primary, setting the stage for a race for the mayoralty against Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) in the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections.
In accordance with past practice, KMT Organizational Development Committee director Lee Che-hua (李哲華) announced Kao as the winner of the primary at a news conference in Taipei without disclosing the actual results of opinion polls conducted on Kao and former National University of Tainan president Huang Hsiu-shuang (黃秀霜).
“The poll results showed that Kao outperformed Huang, who expressed her gratitude that the primary was calm and filled with sincerity, and pledged to help campaign for Kao,” KMT Tainan Chapter director Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) said.
Photo: CNA
The residents of Tainan have longed for changes following 25 years of DPP governance, which has deteriorated the quality of living in the city, Hsieh said.
Kao, 49, is the son of former Taiwan Provincial Assembly speaker Kao Yu-jen (高育仁), who was Tainan County commissioner from 1973 to 1976 and is the father-in-law of New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫).
“The people of Tainan have grown so accustomed to a DPP mayor that they cannot even imagine what the city could become under a leader from a different party,” Kao Su-po said, adding that he, representing the new force of the KMT, was determined to bring Tainan more in line with its status as a special municipality.
The KMT is expected to formally nominate Kao Su-po and KMT Kaohsiung Chapter director Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) as its candidates for the Tainan and Kaohsiung mayoral elections respectively at a meeting of the KMT Central Standing Committee today.
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