Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介), a nominee for next year's Tainan mayoral election, was presented with a "prop handgun" that he proceeded to brandish during a campaign event on yesterday.
Hsieh, who was selected as the party's mayoral pick on Wednesday, was speaking at a year-end event for KMT military veterans when KMT Vice Chairman Chi Lin-lien (季麟連) pulled out the gun, to the apparent shock of others on stage.
Photo: Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
Chi, a retired general in the Republic of China Marine Corps, told Hsieh that the handgun was "the latest model" from a marine corps manufacturing facility, and presented it to him with wishes for a "resounding victory" with "full firepower."
Chi added that he had wanted to bring a rifle, but that it would have been "inconvenient" to take on the high-speed rail.
A KMT official later assured reporters that the handgun was a "toy" and intended for use as a "prop."
During his speech, Hsieh waved the gun as he pledged to crack down on "black gold" (political corruption and underworld politics) and "official-business collusion," and to strengthen public security.
He said that after years of Tainan being run by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), many people wanted change, which he pledged to deliver within one four-year term, United Daily News reported.
Hsieh previously ran for Tainan mayor in 2022, gaining 43.63 percent of the vote in a loss to DPP incumbent Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲), who received 48.8 percent.
He was then elected to the legislature last year on the KMT party list.
With Huang set to leave office after two terms, the DPP has yet to name its nominee for next year.
Taiwan's next local elections are scheduled to take place on Nov. 28 next year.
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