The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday made an unofficial commitment to independent Taipei mayoral hopeful Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) that it would not nominate its own candidate in the election and reached an agreement with the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) that only one candidate would represent the pan-green camp in the New Taipei City mayoral election.
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬), who served as convener of a task force for the DPP’s Taipei mayoral primary, issued a joint statement after a two-hour meeting with Ko that the DPP agreed to cooperate with the independent candidate to end the decade-long governance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in Taipei.
The DPP pledged that it would not ask Ko to join the party should he win the election and that the party would not interfere with Ko’s personnel decisions, Gao said, adding that the 27 DPP candidates in the Taipei councilor elections would support Ko’s campaign.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The meeting, which gathered the National Taiwan University Hospital physician and several DPP officials, including Gao and deputy secretary-general Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福), was held after Ko beat DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) in an opinion poll conducted by the DPP on Friday that aimed to finalize the sole pan-green camp candidate and boost the chances of defeating KMT nominee Sean Lien (連勝文).
The DPP’s decision not to nominate its own candidate in the Taipei mayoral election will not be official until the Central Executive Committee meets tomorrow, but the joint statement has erased any possibility that the party would renege on its promise to work with Ko, which at one point was creating confusion after the announcement of the poll result on Friday.
As part of the reciprocal commitment, Ko agreed to hold talks with DPP candidates in other mayoral and commissioner elections to formulate “shared platforms” and, if he wins the election, take the same positions as DPP mayors and commissioners on major policy discussions.
Ko also pledged to campaign for DPP candidates in the Taipei councilor elections.
Meanwhile, the DPP, led by former party secretary-general Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), convener of a special committee in charge of seven-in-one elections affairs, held talks with the TSU yesterday and both sides agreed to hold a public opinion survey by the end of this month to determine the final pan-green camp New Taipei City mayoral candidate in a similar format to the Taipei mayoral primary.
Former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃), the DPP’s candidate for the New Taipei City mayoral election, will compete with TSU Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) in the primary poll.
The pan-green camp candidate’s rival in New Taipei City remains unclear as New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election.
If Chu decides to run for the presidency in 2016, the most likely replacement candidate would be New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜).
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
MORE DEMOCRACY: The only solution to Taiwan’s current democratic issues involves more democracy, including Constitutional Court rulings and citizens exercising their civil rights , Lai said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not the “motherland” of the Republic of China (ROC) and has never owned Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The speech was the third in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to deliver across Taiwan. Taiwan is facing external threats from China, Lai said at a Lions Clubs International banquet in Hsinchu. For example, on June 21 the army detected 12 Chinese aircraft, eight of which entered Taiwanese waters, as well as six Chinese warships that remained in the waters around Taiwan, he said. Beyond military and political intimidation, Taiwan