The Golkar party founded by former dictator Suharto kept its lead yesterday in Indonesia's general election and its leader Akbar Tanjung won support in his bid for the presidency.
With 89 million votes counted after the April 5 poll, Golkar had 20.99 percent compared to 19.67 percent for President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Tanjung has already claimed victory, saying most of the votes still to be tallied will come from his party's powerbase in outlying regions.
Megawati will have to battle to keep her job in a presidential election on July 5 after PDI-P's poor showing compared to 1999, when it took 34 percent of the votes.
Her former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose new Democrat party performed strongly in the election, is by far the presidential front-runner, according to opinion surveys.
Tanjung, one of Indonesia's most experienced politicians, will face five other Golkar candidates at a convention on Tuesday to pick the party's presidential candidate.
He was convicted of graft involving food aid for the poor but was cleared in February on appeal to the Supreme Court.
Opinion polls have shown him ranked only fourth or so among people's presidential preferences. But some analysts expect him to secure the nomination given that he has apparently delivered victory in the parliamentary poll.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
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