Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) yesterday said the party would announce its nominees for December’s special municipality elections in two phases.
KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said the party would announce its nominees in March or April. King said the party would finalize the candidate list sooner, and the list would be announced in two phases.
“We will explain the nomination mechanism in a short time, and we will finalize the nomination of candidates considering all circumstances,” King said.
King said the party would adopt a flexible nomination process. Coordination, opinion polls or polls plus party member voting could all be adopted as a means to finalize the nominees.
Ma earlier said the party would conduct opinion polls to select candidates even though officials have been recruited to select a list of nominations.
As to the upcoming legislative by-election on Feb. 27, King said the party would step up its campaigning efforts by inviting the four candidates to attend a central standing committee meeting on Wednesday to solicit support from party members.
Ma will start another round of by-election campaigning during the Lunar New Year holidays by visiting Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli and Hualien counties, where the by-election will be held.
King arranged frequent campaigning events for Ma after the KMT suffered a significant defeat in January’s legislative by-elections. Ma did not campaign for party legislators until the day before the elections last month.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) grabbed all three seats in last month’s legislative by-elections. DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) promised to lead the party and take all four seats in the upcoming by-elections.
King said the pan-blue camp needed to join in the election efforts in order to beat the DPP and win the elections.
The KMT remained upbeat about winning the by-election in Taoyuan, with the county traditionally seen as a pan-blue stronghold. In Hsinchu, the KMT sought to solve a dispute between local factions that support Hsinchu County Commissioner Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳) or former commissioner Cheng Yung-ching (鄭永金) after the party nominated Cheng’s brother, Cheng Yung-tan (鄭永堂), to run in the by-election.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe