Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) is to hold his first official rally as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate on Sunday, his campaign office said yesterday.
The rally is to take place in New Taipei City’s Xingfu Shuiyang Park (幸福水漾公園), but New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and former mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) are not expected to attend because of scheduling conflicts, the office said.
“The rally will be the first held by Han’s campaign office,” said Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華), deputy chief executive of Han’s Taipei campaign office.
Photo: CNA
During the KMT presidential primary, Han staged five rallies organized by his supporters, with the last one on July 8 in Hsinchu, she said.
New Taipei City was chosen as the site for his first official rally, because it is his birthplace, she said, adding that the last rally is to be held in Kaohsiung.
The Sunday rally, which is to be held from 4pm to 9pm, will feature musical performances and speeches by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), she said.
Former Taipei County commissioners Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and Lin Fong-cheng (林豐正), former New Taipei City deputy mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) and all KMT legislative candidates for the city are to attend the rally, she said.
The office also invited former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and is still waiting for her answer, she added.
Earlier yesterday, when asked about Han’s rally, Hou said his schedule is “very full” and he must prioritize municipal affairs.
As the mayor, his responsibilities to the city’s 4 million residents are far more urgent, he added.
Chu’s office on Wednesday said that the former KMT chairman would be visiting Japan on the day of the rally, adding that the trip had been arranged last month.
Asked if she is worried about the absence of Hou and Chu, Hsu said that she is more concerned about the turnout.
Han has been very nervous about the rally and asked her if it would attract many people, Hsu said in an interview with Pop Radio.
“Since we are organizing the rally, the mayor has put a lot of thought into it and hopes to see that his supporters have not left him,” she said.
“This event is of key importance to us,” she said, adding that her goal is to attract at least 200,000 people.
While recent public opinion polls showed Han losing support, surveys conducted by his team indicate that his support rate remained at about 30 percent, she said.
Han’s support rate did not decline, but President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) increased because of the anti-extradition bill protests in Hong Kong, she said.
As not every survey is accurate, she has told Han’s supporters to stop paying attention to poll results, she added.
Additional reporting by Chou Hsiang-yi
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
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
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