Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福) yesterday said that the party would pick its candidates for next year’s elections in regions where its members are seeking re-election by the end of November.
The DPP Electoral Strategy Committee is about to begin phase two of preparations for the special municipality and city and county council elections after it enlisted DPP Central Standing Committee member Cheng Hung-hui (鄭宏輝) and Central Executive Committee member Chen Mao-sung (陳茂松) to work with it, Hung said.
The committee has also hired New Vision Foundation chief executive Chiou Yi-jen (邱義仁) — a former National Security Council secretary-general, Executive Yuan Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Jason Liu (劉建忻) and General Association of Chinese Culture secretary-general Lin Ching-chang (林錦昌) as consultants, he said.
The DPP Electoral Strategy Committee will divide its work into three categories, he said.
In constituencies where a DPP member is seeking re-election, it would complete the necessary preparatory work to compile a list of candidates for the Central Executive Committee’s approval before the end of November, Hung said.
For “difficult” constituencies, which include Taipei and New Taipei City, Hung said that coordination to decide on candidates is under way.
The DPP would not make a decision about working with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) any time soon, he said, mentioning the time it took to decide how to handle Ko ahead of the 2014 mayoral election.
“Anything could happen,” he said.
For constituencies where a DPP mayor or commissioner has served two consecutive terms and must step down — according to the party’s rules — the Electoral Strategy Committee would talk to DPP members who might be interested in running before the party holds its primary, he said.
He rejected news reports that said the party would hold its primary in March, saying that it has yet to decide on a date.
According to the rules set by the DPP headquarters, current city and county councilors, lawmakers and committee members who are interested in running for a mayoral or county commissioner post must renounce their current posts a year ahead of the mayoral and commissioner inaugural date, which means by Dec 25 this year, Hung said.
He also said that the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan and the DPP would join forces to campaign for DPP candidates next year.
Asked by reporters if he was worried that the DPP’s rivals might accuse it of inappropriately using government resources for the elections, Hung said he was not.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS