Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (
Chow Mei-ching (
The couple joined Hu, KMT vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and their wives to sing songs and mingled with participants during the party.
Chow, a US-trained lawyer, usually avoids publicity and has only campaigned for her husband on the eve of two elections he ran for Taipei mayor.
Earlier yesterday, Hu had dismissed accusations from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taichung city councilors that he had abused municipal resources to stage the party as a campaign event for Ma's presidential run.
"What's wrong with campaigning for candidates in private?" he said after attending an event in Taichung.
"There's nothing wrong with campaigning as long as I don't use municipal resources and don't do it during office hours," he said.
Hu said the event was sponsored by the KMT, rather than the Taichung City Government, and the city government had not contributed any money toward the staging of the party.
At the party, Ma thanked his wife for her ongoing support, and gave his blessing to all those attending the party.
Ma said he and his wife had accepted Hu's invitation to yesterday's party because they were old friends.
He declined to say whether Chow would attend any future campaign events.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
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