Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said he would resign from the council next week to seek his party’s nomination to run for mayor of Taoyuan, demonstrating his confidence in being selected by his party.
Lo, who has chosen to resign on Monday, said that the move was historic, as no elected official in Taiwan has resigned a position before winning a party’s nomination to run for another elected post.
Cheng Wen-tsan of the Democratic Progressive Party has been mayor of Taoyuan since 2014, when Taoyuan city and county were merged into a special municipality. Before that, Taoyuan was led by John Wu (吳志揚) of the KMT from 2009 to 2014 and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) from 2001 to 2009.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Elected to the Taipei City Council in 2018, the 52-year-old Lo represents the city’s Wenshan (文山) and Daan (大安) districts. He served as Presidential Office spokesman for two years during former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) second term.
Lo is reportedly lagging behind other KMT mayoral hopefuls in party polling, but the KMT leadership is said to be willing to back whichever candidate has the best chance of winning.
Lu Yu-ling (呂玉玲), a third-term KMT legislator hailing from Taoyuan, has declared her interest in the nomination, while Legislator Lu Ming-che (魯明哲) is said to be the party front-runner for the nomination.
In February, the KMT said it would select candidates for the elections in November instead of holding primaries.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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