Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) yesterday officially qualified for the presidential election in January after the Central Election Commission (CEC) validated the signatures he had collected to run as an independent candidate.
Gou and his running mate, Tammy Lai (賴佩霞), submitted 1,038,031 signatures — more than the 1,036,778 counted by their campaign staff — of which 902,389, or 87 percent, were valid, the CEC said in a statement.
They needed at least 289,667 signatures, or 1.5 percent of all eligible voters, to get on the ballot.
Photo:CNA
Of the 10 signature campaigns registered with the CEC, only five submitted signatures. Besides Gou and Lai, none of the other campaigners passed the threshold.
The nine unsuccessful campaigners would each forfeit their NT$1 million (US$30,931) deposits for failing to collect half the required number of endorsements, the CEC said.
In a statement, Gou’s campaign office thanked CEC staff and everyone who supported the signature drive, saying that Gou would aim to bring about cross-strait peace, as well as prosperity and a “clean” government, if he wins the election.
In other developments, representatives of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) are to meet again today to negotiate whether they will field a joint ticket for the presidential race.
The meeting is to take place at the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation in Taipei, with former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT invited to participate as a witness, statements issued by the two parties said.
The attendees would include the KMT’s presidential candidate New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), TPP Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), the TPP said.
Due to venue restrictions, reporters would not be allowed to attend the meeting, but a news conference would be held afterward, the TPP said.
The meeting was arranged after the two parties agreed to partly determine who would run for president and would run for vice president using public polls after months of deadlock.
What remain to be determined are the content and rules of the poll, Chu said.
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