Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) remains unsure whether he would run for president, as he is “hesitant about abandoning his mayorship halfway through a term.”
After giving a speech to executive master of business administration students at National Cheng Kung University yesterday, Ko was asked to comment on the trend of mayors leaving their posts for central government posts.
The student gave the examples of former Tainan mayor William Lai (賴清德) and former Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), who left their cities to become premier and presidential office secretary-general respectively.
Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) looks set to become the next example and is the brunt of many jokes because of this, the student added.
The student said he believed Ko was committed to “changing the country’s political culture,” and asked whether he felt that quitting a mayorship halfway through would have any effect on that “political culture.”
Ko said that it would depend on what the mayor had accomplished, citing former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), who last year lost a re-election bid and saw many of his projects overturned by the new city government.
“However, Han Kuo-yu leaving his post would have little impact, because he has not done anything,” Ko said.
However, if I were to leave to run for president, the impact would be great, as my administration has only “half finished” its work, Ko said.
Later, Ko told reporters that he expected national security would be balanced with the needs of trade when asked whether he was worried new legislation restricting activity in China by government officials would affect the annual Taipei-Shanghai twin-city summit.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods