Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday denied reports that he was planning to join the Taipei mayoral race next year and was trying to persuade former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) to drop her bid to represent the party in the election.
The remarks came in response to a column posted by political commentator Wu Tsu-chia (吳子嘉) on the my-formosa.com online news Web site yesterday which alleged that Su had decided to enter the election and had sent DPP caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) to dissuade Lu from running in the party’s primary.
Wu said that while Su would like lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to represent the party in the Taipei mayoral race, Lu has been leading Koo in the polls, forcing Su to enter the race himself.
Having Lu and former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) as candidates in the mayoral elections in Taipei and New Taipei City (新北市) respectively could derail Su’s campaign for re-election as party chairman in May next year, Wu added.
However, Koo and Lu are not the only aspirants Su has to worry about, as a majority of public opinion polls show that Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), director of National Taiwan University’s department of traumatology who is planning to run as an independent, has been leading all the pan-green camp aspirants.
Some pro-independence supporters have urged the DPP to include Ko in its party primary, so that the pan-green camp can have the best candidate run against the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) representative.
Lu has rejected the idea, saying Ko cannot be included because he is not a DPP member.
Ko yesterday said he agreed that the pan-green camp should settle on one candidate to have a better chance at winning.
If the DPP refuses to include him in the primary process, his support rate will likely be the deciding factor for his campaign, Ko said.
“If my support rate is not good enough to beat other aspirants, I would consider dropping out of the race,” Ko said.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS