Public Television Service (PTS) on Friday announced that all five Taipei mayoral candidates would participate in a televised debate.
PTS yesterday said that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), an independent seeking re-election, on Thursday signed an agreement form to attend the debate.
Representatives of the registered candidates on Tuesday are to discuss details of the debate, PTS said.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The principles of fairness, openness and neutrality would be upheld, PTS said, adding that it has hosted four presidential and 10 mayoral debates.
Over the past few weeks, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) and Democratic Progressive Party candidate Pasuya Yao (姚文智) have repeatedly urged Ko to attend debates.
At a forum in Taipei last week, Ting, Yao and independent candidates Lee Si-kuen and Wu E-yang (吳萼洋) said Ko was avoiding public debates.
Ko yesterday reiterated that he never said he would not attend debates, just not before Nov. 8, when he is to take leave from his mayoral duties.
There are many commercial television stations, so it would be strange to attend a debate held by one while refusing others, Ko said.
There would be less controversy if he attended one held by PTS, which is a non-commercial station, he said.
Ting said that debates could have been held earlier if it were not for Ko’s stalling tactics.
He only agreed to attend one after “being condemned by a thousand accusing fingers pointing at him,” Ting said.
Ting said he would focus on issues of a declining city with no concrete developments and city residents working hard, but receiving low salaries.
Yao said it has been a long wait for the debate and it should have been held earlier so that Ko’s administrative performance could be evaluated.
It would be best to hold the debate on Nov. 10 or Nov. 11, or on both days, he said, adding that as soon as possible would be fine if Ko is willing to attend.
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
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
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