Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said yesterday that the party would continue to coordinate with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on fielding only one pan-green candidate per constituency in the next legislative elections.
Huang said the TSU has yet to "feel sincerity" on the part of the DPP, but will make further efforts to coordinate with the party until July 31.
As the new "single-member constituency, two votes" electoral system will be adopted for the next legislative elections and the number of seats in the legislature will be halved from the current 225 to 113, the pan-green camp has been coordinating for months on fielding a single candidate in each constituency to boost its chances of winning more seats in the slimmed-down legislature.
Huang said the DPP should respect the political strength of the TSU, adding that the Southern Taiwan Society, an independence advocate, recently suggested that the nomination of pan-green' candidates be based on the number of ballots garnered by each of the two parties in the previous legislative elections.
As the DPP collected 35 percent of the vote in the last elections while the TSU garnered 8 percent, the TSU should nominate between 14 or 15 of the candidates for the 73 regional seats up for grabs, Huang said.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
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