The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Central Executive Committee yesterday agreed unanimously to postpone an extraordinary national congress, originally scheduled for Saturday, to later this year.
DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun told the press the extraordinary session had been delayed so that it would more or less coincide with the party's annual national congress.
It is anticipated that the congress will be held at some point between next month and September.
Yu said that the committee reached the agreement on the postponement because it was difficult to mobilize its national representatives for anything other than an election campaign.
According to a recent telephone poll of representatives, very few were interested in attending the extraordinary congress, Yu said.
Details of the annual congress, however, were still being finalized, he said.
The party is obliged to hold an extraordinary session because of a proposal to change the legislative candidate selection process initiated by committee member Huang Ching-lin (
The DPP also announced the names of 56 district legislative nominees yesterday.
Yu said the DPP had reserved nine seats for individuals outside the party and six others for independent or figures from other parties cooperating with the DPP.
The public opinion polls for DPP Legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (謝欣霓) and former legislator Chien Chao-tung (簡肇棟), both of whom are competing in Taichung County's third district, need to be held again because of a procedural flaw in the selection of polling companies, Yu said.
The poll rating accounts for 70 percent of a would-be candidate's final "score," while the party-member vote early last month made up the remaining 30 percent.
The nomination announcement for Kaohsiung's third district, where Legislator Peter Lin (林進興) defeated Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤), was postponed because Lin has been indicted for defrauding the Bureau of National Health Insurance of NT$190 million (US$5.7 million) by making false insurance claims.
The party's Central Disciplinary Committee has yet to decide whether to suspend his membership, Yu said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
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