The People First Party (PFP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will work together to promote a single candidate for Nantou County commissioner this year, the PFP's hopeful for the post said yesterday.
The PFP's Nantou County commissioner nominee, PFP Legislative Caucus Whip Chen Chih-pin (
Survey
With a number of party old guard serving as witnesses, Chen said that he had met with Lee on Saturday and agreed to hire a survey company to run polls in Nantou County next month, and have the winner become the pan-blue camp's candidate for the area.
The comments from Chen yesterday came as a surprise, given recent remarks from PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) identifying Nantou County as one place where the party will not back down in the face of potentially stronger KMT candidates.
In comments last week, Soong said that while he acknowledges that the PFP and KMT should cooperate in the year-end elections given their overlapping support bases, the PFP will not give way in regions it feels confident of its candidates' success, such as Nantou County and Keelung City.
Done deal
"Both sides already have an agreement, that whoever loses [in the polls] will back out of the race and support the other pan-blue candidate," Chen said, adding that he is confident of his personal success, given that he is better known.
When reporting the agreement to PFP Secretary-General Chin Chin-sheng (
In reaction however, Chen said he did not think that the KMT would manipulate the polls.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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