Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) proposal to only allow KMT members to decide the party’s presidential candidate for next year continued to draw criticism yesterday, with some questioning whether he aimed to rig the game for himself.
It would be unthinkable if KMT members who are loyal to the party and have regularly paid their membership fees were excluded from the process of selecting the party’s next presidential candidate, Wu said on Thursday.
“If we choose not to conduct a poll among party members, it is a no brainer that [the public] would want to select someone who would be easily defeated,” Wu said, adding that many KMT Central Standing Committee members also believed that the rights of party members should not be undercut.
Photo: Huang Chien-hua, Taipei Times
He added that he also agreed with some people’s suggestion that the person nominated to be the next presidential candidate should also serve as KMT chairman.
There are growing calls within the KMT for the party’s next presidential candidate to be chosen solely on the results of public opinion polls, rather than the traditional method, which combines public opinion polls and party member surveys, with the results weighing 70 percent and 30 percent respectively.
The proposed “party member only” primary polls are expected to put Wu, who is rumored to be interested in running for president next year, at an advantage, as he received the support of the majority of KMT members in a six-legged 2017 party chairperson election, despite having a consistently poor public approval rating.
Former KMT chairperson Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) criticized Wu’s proposal on Friday, saying that the will of KMT members could not represent the will of the people and that a presidential primary based solely on public opinion polls would be simpler and fairer.
She also raised concerns about “dummy members,” who are recruited for the sole purpose of driving up ratings.
The practice of setting up a system for the purpose of ensuring, or impeding, one’s nomination as candidate runs counter to Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) idea that “the world community is equally shared by all” (天下為公), former KMT lawmaker Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) said yesterday.
He also questioned why Wu only heard the suggestions of KMT members supporting “party member only” polls, but not the “deafening calls” for a primary based solely on the results of public opinion polls.
The question of how the primary should be conducted was being deliberated by the KMT’s think tank, Wu said, adding that its decision is expected to be announced in April.
Additional reporting by Huang Chien-hua
‘HONEYMOON’ IS OVER: A political science professor said that the Tsai administration’s popularity peaked after it successfully contained COVID-19, but is waning President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) and Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) approval ratings fell significantly this month in the wake of the government’s handling of the distribution of relief funds and stimulus coupons to people and businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, a poll released yesterday by the New Power Party (NPP) showed. The poll showed that 68 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with Tsai’s performance, down 8.9 percentage points from last month, while 21 percent said they disapproved of her performance. Her approval among respondents aged 20 to 29 fell 14.7 percentage points, the largest decrease when compared with other age
Food delivery provider Foodpanda had 564 consumer disputes from January to last month and failed to attend many mediation sessions with local governments nationwide, the Executive Yuan’s Consumer Protection Committee said. In a news release earlier this month, the committee said that it investigated consumer complaints and mediations for Foodpanda and rival Uber Eats during the period, when the number of delivery orders jumped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Uber Eats had 80 consumer disputes, the committee said. Of Foodpanda’s consumer disputes, 368 resulted from delivery drivers canceling orders after customers could not be reached, 108 were related to the quality or quantity
Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), wife of Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), yesterday said that the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) claim that Taiwan had warned the WHO about possible human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 was “far-fetched.” The US on April 9 said that the WHO had put politics first and ignored Taiwan’s early warning in December last year, which the WHO denied the following day. The WHO said that it received an e-mail from Taiwanese authorities on Dec. 31 last year, but that “there was no mention in the message of human-to-human transmission.” Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC,
The Taipei City Government yesterday promised to improve its Taipei Card 3.0 application process after a city councilor said that it required applicants to provide irrelevant personal information. Taipei City Councilor Miao Po-ya (苗博雅) said that to activate the card — which can function as an EasyCard, Senior EasyCard, student card and library card, as well as provide discounts for restaurants, arts and entertainment in the city — people must provide personal information such as their passport number, occupation, education level, their spouse’s name, personal income, credit rating and health information. The city government said the system would help it digitalize and
RSS