Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that if he plans to run for president, he would announce a bid by early September at the latest, as he would need time to gather the required petitions to run as an independent candidate.
“Sept. 17 is the last day that [the Central Election Commission” accepts petitions” for independent candidates, he said in an interview with an online news outlet.
“We would need to set up petition stations and the process would take more than 10 days, even if we can efficiently collect the petitions. So, frankly, the deadline for such a decision is not Sept. 17, but early September,” he added.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
While Ko has not announced his intention to run for president next year, he has been included in various opinion polls, including those used to decide the candidates for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
“Up until now, I have never really wanted to run for president. I am searching for reasons not to enter the race every day,” Ko said.
However, many intellectuals, members of the middle class and people who are not particularly concerned about Taiwanese independence or unification with China are anxious about the choices they have now, he said, apparently referring to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), who won the KMT presidential primary.
Asked about a remark by Han in an interview published yesterday about Ko not having “a central belief,” Ko said that just as most physicians hold the central belief of helping patients become healthier, politicians should regard as their central belief the long-term interests of the Taiwanese public.
“Is it possible for the ‘1992 consensus’ with its ‘one China, different interpretations’ component to be a central belief? I do not think so,” Ko said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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