Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) hopes the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), of which he is chairman, does not become “bogged down” in the pro-independence or pro-unification debate, he said yesterday.
Ko made the remark at the beginning of a two-day camp the party hosted for its members.
The party should not “get too bogged down” in the independence versus unification debate and should instead find an alternative centerpiece issue different from those of the pan-blue or pan-green camps, he said.
Photo: CNA
The TPP also held an interim convention for its party representatives, during which a proposal was passed to charge its members an annual fee, which would begin next month at the earliest.
The convention was scheduled to start at 1pm, but almost adjourned due to a lack of a quorum, as fewer than 56 of the party’s 111 representatives were at the opening.
The meeting began about 40 minutes later, after members gradually arrived and the number of attending representatives finally met the quorum requirement.
During its national convention last year, party members proposed that it should charge a membership fee, but the Ministry of the Interior informed them that the party must first amend its charter before charging fees, Ko said.
TPP spokesperson Chang Ching-chun (張清俊) said the party would charge an annual membership fee of NT$500 or NT$10,000 for a lifetime membership.
When asked if he was concerned that the fees might drive some members to leave the party, Ko said that a political party needs money for its operations, and “it is impossible for us to be ‘celestial beings and not need to eat food,’” so the party passed the amendment to complete the legal requirement.
Ko said that the party’s five legislators-at-large have performed outstandingly, but their duties in local organizational efforts should be reduced to accommodate their legislative work.
The party charter should be amended to specify and regulate party members’ operational duties, he added.
Additional reporting by CNA
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods