Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) on Friday said that touting “woman power” to elect more female Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians would support corruption and nepotism in politics, adding to mismanagement and corruption in local governments.
She made the comment after Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) hosted the KMT’s “Perfect Ten” event in her city on Friday, a joint campaign rally held at Taichung’s Taiping Sports Stadium, attended by party chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫).
The KMT’s leaders hosted the event to showcase the party’s female candidates running in next month’s local elections, and to address a perception that it is a male-dominated party.
Photo: CNA
Featured at the event were 10 candidates in city mayor and county commissioner elections, with seven incumbents seeking a second term, including Lu, Changhua County Commissioner Wang Hui-mei (王惠美), Yunlin County Commissioner Chang Li-shan (張麗善) and Chiayi City Mayor Huang Hui-min (黃敏惠).
Also at the event were incumbent commissioners Lin Zi-miao (林姿妙), Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚) and Yao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴) of the Yilan, Hualien and Taitung county governments.
Joining the incumbents were current and former legislators running for local seats, including Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Ko Chih-en (柯志恩), along with Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) and Alicia Wang (王育敏), in the commissioner races for Nantou County and Chiayi County respectively.
“The KMT is fielding 10 women in the local elections to help govern Taiwan’s 20 counties and cities. This shows a rising tide of women in our party,” Lu said.
“The seven incumbents have done great jobs in protecting people in their cities and counties during the COVID-19 pandemic,” she added.
Lin Ching-yi, who is also a DPP spokeswoman, said that most of the incumbents have performed their jobs with mismanagement and negligence.
If they are elected, their cities and counties would regress by at least 30 years, she said.
She also said that several of the candidates presented at the event are either being investigated for or have been accused of corruption.
She cited Yilan County Commissioner Lin Zi-miao who, along with family members and associates, has been indicted over a series of questionable land deals, and accused of money laundering and forgery, while her daughter reportedly used Yilan government offices and an official residence for alleged illegal transactions.
“Lu was questioned by Taichung councilors on allegations of her government altering planned routes and stations of the city’s new Mass Rapid Transit system for the financial benefit of powerful local families who profited from the land transactions,” Lin Ching-yi said.
“In Nantou County, KMT Legislator Hsu is running for the commissioner’s job, while her family has been accused of illegal appropriation of public land to build a private club with a guest house and recreational facilities,” she said.
She also said that local politicians and residents have long criticized Hsu’s family connections to criminal gangs.
Lin Ching-yi added that Yunlin County Commissioner Chang Li-shan (張麗善) and her family earlier this year were embroiled in allegations of illegal construction and use of public land.
“Chang’s family has long been accused of having ties to criminal syndicates, and have used their positions in Yunlin in corrupt ways,” she said.
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