Independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) yesterday announced that he would not seek re-election next year, citing a desire to retire from politics and care for an ill family member.
Lim said in a statement that he has a family member who has been ill with “a rare disease” for two years, prompting his decision to retire.
Lim thanked Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors Liu Yao-ren (劉耀仁), Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) and Jocelyn Hung (洪婉臻) for demonstrating a spirit of cross-party cooperation in working with him, despite being busy preparing for next year’s elections.
Photo: Yang Cheng-yu, Taipei Times
He would fully support the DPP’s candidates, he said.
“Members of the DPP and other government officials have repeatedly urged me over the past few days to reconsider, and it is with a heavy heart that I make this decision,” he said.
DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao (張志豪) said that Lim had always been regarded as a “high-quality legislator,” who had been a partner to the DPP on many occasions.
“We regret to see Lim go, but we respect his decision. We will take his choice not to run into consideration when nominating our own candidates,” Chang said. “During his tenure, he successfully promoted many progressive bills and made possible the completion of many construction projects.”
Lim said that his constituency — Taipei’s fifth electoral district covering Zhongzheng (中正) and Wanhua (萬華) districts — is considered a challenging one, but he believes that a good candidate with new strategies and good energy could bring positive change.
“Everyone’s worry is that if I do not run, the Zhongzheng and Wanhua constituency will regress, but I believe this will open the seat up to someone with more positive energy, increasing the impetus for progress there,” he said.
Lim said his aim as a legislator had been to act as a bridge for change with the districts’ talented young people, to help them realize their vision for Taiwan.
“Bringing together young people has always been an important task for me,” he said.
In his remaining time in office, he would continue to work hard for the constituency and seek ways to work toward his goal of Taiwan being seen as a “normal country with dignity,” he said.
Lim told reporters that his decision not to run had to be made as early as possible to give the DPP time to prepare a candidate for the constituency.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) had previously expressed interest in contesting the constituency.
Additional reporting by Chen Cheng-yu
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS