Embattled Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) has vowed to take full responsibility for the party’s double defeat on Sunday in a Taichung legislative by-election and attempt to recall independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐).
Speaking with reporters in Tainan a day after the voting, Chu said he would “shoulder full responsibility for the setback and apologize to all of our supporters.”
However, Chu said the KMT would not give up on building a stronger opposition force to act as a check and balance on the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in city and county-level elections to be held at the end of this year.
Photo: CNA
Chu, who was elected as KMT chair in September last year, said that to win future elections, the 103-year-old party needs to solicit more support from swing voters and younger Taiwanese while also appealing to the so-called “light blue” demographic that affiliate themselves with the KMT.
“Only by being unified will we able to work with other opposition parties to fight the ruling DPP that controls the media and an ‘Internet army,’” he said.
Chu’s comments were made amid mounting pressure from within his own party in the wake of a string of consecutive electoral defeats since he took office.
Last month, all four KMT-backed referendum proposals — including two initiated by the party — failed at the polls.
On Sunday, a by-election in Taichung saw Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) of the DPP elected to the legislature over the KMT’s Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒).
Meanwhile, a KMT-backed recall attempt against Lim was also defeated the same night, as the number of “yes” votes did not pass the required threshold.
Political analysts have attributed the defeats to the KMT’s failure to mobilize its political assets in the by-election and in the recall vote.
In contrast, the DPP put up a united front in support of Lim, who has a good relationship with the DPP, they said.
Chu was also criticized for not attending a KMT press conference on Sunday night in the wake of the defeats.
At Sunday’s press event, KMT spokesman Ling Tao (凌濤) defended Chu by saying that neither the referendums, recall votes nor by-election had been initiated during Chu’s tenure.
Chu was simply shouldering the responsibility of his predecessor, Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), he added.
Media reports suggest that Chu’s no-show on Sunday had irritated many hardcore KMT supporters and even KMT lawmakers, who felt the chairman was trying to dodge responsibility.
KMT Legislator Lee De-wei (李德維), for one, said Chu’s absence was a sign of “cowardice” and a poor show of crisis management on the KMT’s part, while calling on Chu to face reality.
KMT Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) said the party desperately needed to conduct a full-scale review into the latest losses.
“There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not facing your failure,” he said.
Media personality and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) urged KMT supporters to remain calm and give Chu more time to make adjustments to prepare the party for the year-end local elections.
Jaw also called on Chu to include the opinions of lawmakers, KMT city and county heads, and academics in his decisionmaking process, instead of relying on his “inner circle” as he did before.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching