Efforts to mediate between President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and former premier William Lai (賴清德) are ongoing and would not be abandoned, Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday.
The comments came after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said on Monday that he was aware that “some people within the party” want to convene a party congress, which could veto any candidate produced via party primaries.
“The article would not be invoked casually and has, in fact, never been invoked since its drafting,” Cho said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Pursuant to Article 10 of the party’s governmental office candidate nomination regulations, a primary-produced candidate can be vetoed by such a congress if a motion is signed by one-fifth of all congress members and the motion would be ratified by “yes” votes from at least three-fifths of attending congress members, who must number at least half of all congress members.
The party’s Central Executive Committee would then have to select another eligible candidate.
Cho’s comment has been interpreted by pundits as an implication that the party could invoke the article to block Lai, who on March 18 registered for the party’s presidential primary.
Tsai registered for the primary three days later, after having confirmed in February her intention to run for re-election.
Chen is among a team of DPP arbitrators set up by Cho to find common ground between Tsai and Lai.
Asked by radio host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) whether Lai is worried that Tsai and her supporters would resort to invoking Article 10, Lai’s spokesman Lin Sheng-che (林聖哲) yesterday said that if that were the case, “it would severely hurt the DPP overall.”
“We hope to pursue normal channels [stipulated by regulations governing a primary,]” Lin said.
The party congress is an existing institution, “but we hope congress representatives would discuss this issue rationally,” Lin said, adding that any deviation could antagonize the public.
Extant regulations are made so that no other ad hoc regulations need be made in extreme situations, Lin said, adding that it is up to the wisdom of congress members which path to choose.
Regarding calls within the party for Tsai and Lai to consider running as presidential and vice presidential candidates respectively, Lin said that Lai is waiting for the results of the primary before considering other options.
Pressed by Chou whether this meant that Lai would consider running with Tsai if he lost the primary, Lin that he is not Lai and cannot answer for him.
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