The KMT's election campaign heated up yesterday as the party's Taipei chapter launched the "KMT Youth Corps," with the aim of promoting its candidates for the December elections.
Addressing the 600 young people perched on motor scooters outside the Taipei City Council yesterday morning, KMT Vice Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) said that young people are playing an important role in the reform of the KMT.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"They're valuable assets and the driving force behind the party's reform and resurrection," he said.
Members of the youth corps will campaign on their scooters for the party.
Wu added that Taiwanese people had come to understand over the past year and a half since the DPP came to power that Taiwan cannot move forward without the KMT.
"Only the new KMT can lead the nation out of the current economic and social hardship," he said.
Wu also called on the public to support the KMT's legislative candidates.
"None of the KMT candidates nominated for the year-end legislative elections has any connection with black gold politics and they therefore deserve the people's trust," he said.
The party has nominated a total of eight candidates to run in Taipei City constituencies.
The four candidates nominated for the city's northern constituency are deputy chief of the party's cultural affairs department, Tsai Cheng-yuan (
The other four, nominated for the southern constituency, are incumbent lawmakers Apollo Chen (陳學聖), Chen Horng-chi (陳鴻基) and Tina Pan (潘維剛); and John Chang (章孝嚴), a former KMT secretary-general and foreign minister.
After some candidates delivered pep talks, the eight candidates were presented with a giant mock check, symbolizing their campaign promises and encouraging them to be focused, professional and disciplined in the election campaign.
Wu also presented flags to the 12 team captains leading the scooter riders, symbolizing the beginning of the party's campaign activities.
The teams, which are comprised of both KMT members and non-members, were recruited from the Taipei chapter of the KMT Youth Commission.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats