Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and independent commissioner candidates romped to re-election yesterday, with wide margins of victory for incumbents making the east coast counties of Hualien and Taitung counties exceptions to the pan-green wave that swept most of the nation.
Independent Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) won twice as many votes as KMT challenger Tsai Chi-ta (蔡啟塔). He won 56.53 percent of the vote, up from 56.4 percent in 2009.
The election result was a resounding victory for Fu after his application to rejoin the KMT was rejected earlier this year.
Fu was expelled from the KMT when he stood for election in 2009 without party approval.
Fu’s campaign attracted special interest because his wife, Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚), also registered to stand as a candidate for commissioner, in a move widely viewed as “insurance” against the emergence of court verdicts barring him from standing for re-election. Despite their separate candidacies, the husband and wife campaigned as a team, sharing a single headquarters and appearing together in advertisements.
Hsu’s candidacy mirrored her previous appointment as vice commissioner when Fu was first elected, for which purpose the couple temporarily filed for divorce before the appointment was declared illegal by the Ministry of the Interior.
Fu has been shadowed by lawsuits related to stock market speculation throughout his term.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) did not field a commissioner candidate in Hualien County, with DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) saying earlier this month that her party lacked adequate support to launch a viable challenge. The DPP has struggled to make inroads with the Hakka and Aboriginal constituencies who comprise about two-thirds of Hualien’s voters.
Taitung County Commissioner Justin Huang (黃健庭) of the KMT also trounced his opponent, DPP Legislator Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪), in a rematch of the previous election. In 2009, the race was one of the closest in the nation, but yesterday Huang expanded his share of the vote to 54.41 percent, up from 52.6 percent.
The DPP fared better in Yilan County, where DPP incumbent Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) defeated his KMT opponent Chiu Shu-ti (邱淑媞) and expanded his margin of victory, winning re-election with 63.95 percent of the vote, compared with 54.2 percent in 2009.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS