The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday opened its first regional office in Hsinchu as it seeks to spread national roots after winning its first seats in the Jan. 16 legislative elections.
NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said the party chose Hsinchu to open its first regional office, because it received the highest percentage of at-large legislative ballots from the city.
The office is to serve as a “civic platform” to help the party to cooperate with local residents and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help spread its ideas and recruit new members, he said.
Huang said a second wave of offices is to be established in Taipei, Taichung and Hualien, followed by a third wave in Tainan and Kaohsiung, as the party seeks to put down roots and “blossom everywhere” in the nation.
Party officials would also embark on a tour of southern Taiwan next month to report on the party’s work in the Legislative Yuan and meet with supporters in Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung, he added.
Despite the party’s “pan-green” stance, the NPP grassroots operatives have been concentrated almost exclusively in the northern and central electoral districts, where it fielded candidates prior to the elections.
After winning five seats in the elections, the party said that it would concentrate the political party subsidies it receives on building a nationwide organization.
Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智), the party’s former Hsinchu legislative candidate who is to head the local office, said that cooperating with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to provide services to voters would set it apart from ordinary party offices.
“What makes the NPP different is that we were originally organized by NGOs. Other than improving our local operation, we will also cooperate closely with NGOs,” he said, citing plans to provide free legal counsel in conjunction with the Judicial Reform Foundation, as well as plans to cooperate with Citizen Congress Watch to bring transparency to the local city council.
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
Taiwan’s Li Yu-hsiang performs in the men’s singles figure skating short program at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Li finished 24th with a score of 72.41 to advance to Saturday’s free skate portion of the event. He is the first Taiwanese to qualify for the free skate of men’s singles figure skating at the Olympics since David Liu in 1992.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
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