President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is also Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson, is to begin stumping for the party’s mayoral and county commissioner candidates nationwide following its National Congress tomorrow, party sources said yesterday.
The party’s National Congress, centered on the theme “Reform for future generations,” is to be the first large campaign rally for the November local elections after the party’s primary ended last month.
To imitate the glitz of the FIFA World Cup, soccer cards are to be made for 19 DPP mayoral and commissioner candidates and independent Miaoli commissioner candidate Hsu Ting-chen (徐定禎), the sources said, adding that the 20 candidates are to enter the venue one after another as DPP party representatives cheer them on, just as soccer players would before a game.
Governance is like a soccer match, which requires a unified team and a unified goal, the sources said, adding that DPP-backed candidates are like a soccer team, with each incumbent and first-time candidate playing a different role to achieve that goal.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) drafted the mission statement for the congress: “Press on for reforms for Taiwan’s future.”
After the congress, Tsai is to embark on a nationwide tour to boost her support for DPP candidates, the sources said.
The president is to go on another nationwide tour next month and is to continue lending her support to the candidates, they said.
Premier William Lai (賴清德) is also expected to assist in the elections after the congress by visiting different parts of the nation to trumpet the DPP’s governance.
Coming on the heels of the congress are the elections of DPP Central Execution Committee and Central Evaluation Committee members.
Thirty DPP Central Executive Committee members are to be elected, of which 10 are to be elected to the DPP Central Standing Committee (CSC), the party’s highest decisionmaking body.
The CSC election has traditionally been plagued by vote exchanging, whereby factions reach agreements to vote for candidates backed by one another to generate more votes.
However, given that there are only 30 DPP members running for seats in the 30-member Central Executive Committee, vote exchanging ahead of the CSC election could prove to have a lesser effect on the result.
In a break from past practice, DPP mayors and commissioners who have delivered good performance in office are to attend campaign rallies outside their jurisdiction to leverage support for one another and for other DPP-backed candidates, the sources said.
Top DPP executives would be assigned to cities and counties to oversee campaigns and develop campaign strategies, they said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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