Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative candidate Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) at a campaign rally on Friday night asked voters not to let his New Power Party counterpart Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who has “hair that is longer than a woman’s and is mentally abnormal,” into the legislature. Lin yesterday said Lim’s long hair was not why he called him mentally abnormal.
Lin said the statement about Lim’s long hair was “a description of Lim’s current state without judgement.”
“I find both short and long hair nice-looking. Lim should show his long hair openly; there is no need to hide it,” he added.
“The mentally abnormal part was referring to Lim’s criticism of a prosecutor who pressed charges against and called for a heavy sentence be imposed on Justin Lee (李宗瑞), who sexually assaulted 34 women, calling the prosecutor ‘childish and perverted,’” Lin said.
Lee was convicted of sexual assaults and offenses related to privacy for filming sexual acts with women without their consent. Lim in 2012, when Lee was first charged, criticized a prosecutor who called Lee “a pervert, childish and in need of treatment” for the prosecutor’s conflation of personal feelings and duties.
“The prosecutors’ job is to investigate in accordance with the law and evidence, not for you to vent your personal feelings,” Lim wrote on Facebook at the time, adding that such prosecutors “are themselves the childish perverts who need to go back to school in a society of rule of law.”
Lin on Friday said that people should not let Lim, who took part in the occupation of the Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower movement, but has now “suited up, try to swagger into the Legislative Yuan.”
Lim yesterday said he has always been “unwilling to respond” to the KMT’s accusations, adding that Lin’s remarks on Friday “were completely discriminatory.” Lin was, “with his own perspective, discriminating against someone who is different from him,” Lim said.
Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) yesterday lamented the “degeneration of a 100-year-old party,” referring to the KMT.
The KMT “was a grand party that once shone in history,” Wang said. “Even when it is losing, it should face it with dignity in order to win people’s respect.”
“However, anti-civilization, anti-intellectual and anti-human comments not only have nothing good to offer the party’s image, but only show that it has given up on the future, so it could say whatever it wants,” he said.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck Kaohsiung at 1pm today, the Central Weather Administration said. The epicenter was in Jiasian District (甲仙), 72.1km north-northeast of Kaohsiung City Hall, at a depth of 7.8km, agency data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Kaohsiung and Tainan, where it measured a 4 on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale. It also measured a 3 in parts of Chiayi City, as well as Pingtung, Yunlin and Hualien counties, data showed.
Nearly 5 million people have signed up to receive the government’s NT$10,000 (US$322) universal cash handout since registration opened on Wednesday last week, with deposits expected to begin tomorrow, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. After a staggered sign-up last week — based on the final digit of the applicant’s national ID or Alien Resident Certificate number — online registration is open to all eligible Taiwanese nationals, foreign permanent residents and spouses of Taiwanese nationals. Banks are expected to start issuing deposits from 6pm today, the ministry said. Those who completed registration by yesterday are expected to receive their NT$10,000 tomorrow, National Treasury
Taiwan next year plans to launch its first nationwide census on elderly people living independently to identify the estimated 700,000 seniors to strengthen community-based healthcare and long-term care services, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) said yesterday. Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said on the sidelines of a healthcare seminar that the nation’s rapidly aging population and declining birthrate have made the issue of elderly people living alone increasingly pressing. The survey, to be jointly conducted by the MOHW and the Ministry of the Interior, aims to establish baseline data and better allocate care resources, he
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