Vice President William Lai (賴清德) is expected to register tomorrow to join the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) nomination process for next year’s presidential election, inside sources said.
Lai, who is also chairman of the DPP, would submit his registration form — which was collected earlier by his aides — at the party’s headquarters in Taipei, sources said, adding that he would give a brief speech on his reasons for seeking the party’s nomination as its presidential candidate.
Registration for the DPP’s party primary opened yesterday and runs through Friday.
Photo: Taipei Times
The party primary ends on April 12, when the DPP is scheduled to announce its presidential candidate.
The DPP aims to complete the nomination process for its presidential and legislative candidates earlier than usual, a party insider said.
By doing so, all DPP members and candidates would be “ready for action” with regards to campaigning, and hopefully win back people’s trust while motivating the party’s traditional supporters, the source said.
A source close to Lai’s team said that the DPP would make detailed preparations and closely gauge shifts in the political landscape to account for all eventualities, such as if the presidential election comes down to a showdown between the pan-green and pan-blue camps, or if it is a three-way race involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) or another party.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and TPP are mainly seen as having overlapping supporters, but some opinion polls have shown that the TPP could take some of the DPP’s share of young voters, a source said.
“We believe TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) will enter the presidential race, as he wants to attract more votes to boost support for the TPP’s legislative candidates, and to get more legislators-at-large,” they said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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