Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Keelung Council Speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰), whose nomination as the party’s Keelung mayoral candidate was recalled by the party last week, said yesterday he has more than 70,000 signatures from locals who support his running in the race.
Holding a press conference outside Chingan Temple (慶安宮), where he had protested against the KMT’s withdrawal of his nomination last week, Huang yesterday said that — as he said he would — he has collected more than 50,000 signatures from voters in support of his campaign.
Huang was kicked off the KMT ticket on Wednesday last week, the party said, in light of the allegations linking him to influence peddling and corruption in a number of construction projects in Keelung.
He was released on NT$2 million (US$66,800) bail last month.
As he retains his KMT membership, Huang said he would not take legal action against the party and its resolution, despite having accused the KMT of failing to distinguish right from wrong and of violating procedural justice on Friday last week.
Huang said he hopes to be vindicated “after being prosecuted,” echoing a view he shared earlier in the day in a radio interview, saying that he was certain that he — “while completely innocent” — would “definitely” be prosecuted by prosecutors who had tried to detain him three times, but failed.
During another radio interview on Thursday, Huang said that he would not give up on running for office unless he was “thwarted by a bullet.”
At yesterday’s press conference, he repeated statements about a possible threat to his personal safety.
“I’ve told my wife and my daughter that in the next four months [until the elections in November], I would be facing attacks or other unpredictable scenarios that might impact my personal safety, but I am not deterred,” he said.
Huang thanked village wardens — numbering more than 60, he said — and the more than 100 community “director-generals” who he said helped him collect the signatures, lauding what he described as their “bravery.”
“They are not afraid of the oppression coming from the [KMT’s] city party office and the intimidation exhibited by those police officers who made calls to the chiefs to ask whether they would show up for the press conference [yesterday],” Huang said.
With the help of the local officials, Huang as of yesterday had 76,938 signatures from local voters affirming their support, the dismissed candidate said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
RSS